


Alphabet Soup

by MayonnaiseJane



Category: Power Rangers R.P.M.
Genre: And Direct Portrayal Thereof, Angst, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Dr. K Whump, Gen, Missing Scenes, RPM Typical, Spoilers noted by Chapter, Unfortunate Implications, Vignette series, the Flemma's in Chapter 9 if that's what you came for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 16:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10517304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayonnaiseJane/pseuds/MayonnaiseJane
Summary: 26 Canon Compatible Vignettes exploring the backstory and psyche of Doctor K.Newest Letter: P is for Pathos: An argument which appeals to logic is scientifically superior to one which appeals to the emotions... but feelings are hard to ignore.





	1. T is for Thanatos

**Author's Note:**

> This thing is starting to get long, so for those of you just joining us... here's what to expect. Canon compatible story, steeped in the psyche of our good doctor, which uses the series from "In and Out" onward as a framing device for frequent "Doctor K" style side trips to the department of backstory, mapping the vast unknown tracts of her past (and the Ranger's) that the series never addressed on on screen. What was life like in Alphabet Soup? Who were her handlers? If K always wanted to go outside, why doesn't she now? Why are Gem and Gemma not letters? What happened to K after the release of Venjix and before her escape? How did the first three Rangers come to join the team? These are just the questions we've answered so far...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> T is for Thanatos: People who hide themselves from others seldom turn on a dime to wear their heart on their sleeve, but if pressed, they may fake it. Doctor K is nearly clever enough to pull it off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place just after "In or Out."

For a place without the sun, there was never any shortage of light in the Soup.

As far as K knew, they never turned out the fluorescent lighting, at least they never had in any of the parts of it she'd visited, which admittedly were few: her cylinder, later Gem and Gemma's cylinder, directly adjacent, the washroom, and the store room where they kept everything she 'owned' but wasn't currently using, including the cot they brought to her cylinder when they decided it was time for her to sleep.

Even then they never turned out the lights.

At first she had attributed her difficulty in falling asleep in the post Soup world, to the lack of light at night, but when sleeping with the lights on did little to help, she realized that the problem was not the light, but the clock. Alphabet Soup, it seemed in their desire to create the optimum environment for scientific output, had its subjects on a 25 hour clock, 18 waking hours to 7 hours sleep. Her body was trying to tell her it was too early for bed, but she couldn't afford to listen, lest she be slowly left behind one hour at a time.

So despite her personal conviction that the work came before any superfluous creature comforts, she had made allowances for herself in the department of sleep, deeming it to be necessary for the higher functioning required to lead the Rangers against her own creation. Though she still slept upon a folding cot, which she kept in her private room off the ranger room, she no longer attempted to sleep in her clothing using her lab coat for a blanket. Instead she had placed atop it a thick warm sleeping bag and a down pillow, and procured a set of cozy flannel pajamas.

Pajamas she was now wearing in the daytime, whilst staring at the clothes dryer tumbling away with her skirt and sweater, the only ones she had, which she'd worn out of the Soup all the way to Corinth. She continued wearing them, less out of habit, and more for the sense of personal self discipline and dedication to the work which they represented. She washed them once a week, on Sunday, and it suited her fine, as the sweater was worn every day over one of her many clean crisp chambray work shirts, and the skirt over a clean polyester slip, for which she was no more lacking than she was for socks or undergarments.

None the less, on laundry day, stuck wearing her pajamas and slippers around the base as the washing machine and drier churned away at her daily wear, she often wished she had something else presentable to wear in the mean time. Though she need only requisition it to have it, but she never did. Anything else would only be superfluous. They served their purpose, just as she served hers. Equipment is only as good or bad as its output.

"What are you doing still in-"

"-your pajamas Doctor K?" Gem and Gemma bounced into the utility room from… wherever they'd been.

"Laundry," she replied succinctly.

"Ooooh…"

"Yeaaaaaahhhh…" they fixated for a moment on the contents of the tumble drier behind K, as they tossed end over end against the window, around and back.

"Was there... something you needed?" she asked, drawing their attention away from the washing.

"We wanted to talk to you about how-"

"You've been treating Ziggy." They replied.

"How I've been treating him?" She knew precisely what they were talking about, but was playing dumb, hoping they would believe she hadn't really been aware of how her exclusion of Ranger Operator Series Green from her new effort to form attachments with the Rangers was hurting him. She truly hadn't been conscious of her decision to force a separation between herself and the Rangers until they had brought it to her attention, but once she'd put her keen mind to the task of self analysis she'd easily discovered the root of the issue, and just as easily, devised the plausible alternative explanation of shielding herself from future loss.

"You said you were going to be nicer to ALL-"

"the Rangers. You promised us," they pouted.

"I'll try to work on that," she replied, faking a smile for her friends. She was fairly certain they knew she was faking it, but that they wouldn't comment. She had long ago come to realize that their borderline sociopathic cheerfulness was the result of a self re-enforcing belief each had that they needed to be cheerful for the other one's sake. They were as broken as she was, just in a different way.

"YAY!" they cheered, and clambered out the doorway to the utility room, as she returned her attention to the clothes dryer, which was rapidly approaching the end of its cycle.

The truth of the matter was that she still didn't like them. Their cheerful façade was insufferably annoying, they were nearly impossible to direct and once they had an idea in their heads, there was almost no dissuading them. While she was busy building laser cannons and propulsion systems, they'd unabashedly added code to the DNA splicing program, which resulted in cutesy animal faces on her otherwise dignified and practical Zords, complete with 'big googly anime eyes.'

But she'd come to be accustomed to them, like one is to a dog that shreds every shoe one owns, and missed them terribly when she thought they were dead. She'd even come to enjoy the faces on the zords... they weren't disturbing the functionality after all. Equipment is only as good as its output.

Also, she'd seen what they were capable of doing to people who were not their friends.

"Doctor K?" the Green Ranger poked his head around the door frame. "Gem and Gemma said you wanted to talk to me."

K cringed, with her back to the door, cursing the twins. This was certainly not what she'd had in mind when she promised to 'work on' being nicer to Ranger Green. In fact what she had in mind was to make some token gesture at some point in the near future… a properly timed 'Well done,' or some such, and leave it at that: enough to get them off her back, but not enough to bring him any closer.

"They were mistaken, Ranger Operator Series Green," she replied, without turning around to him.

"Mistaken… sure. Or you're screwing with me _again_ ," his frustration was palpable. She set her jaw, the only conscious action it took to blank her face of all emotion, and turned to him.

"I did not ask for you to be here, and I don't want you to be here. Please go."

"It's a free city! I can stand where I please. Maybe I want to stand in the utility room right now," he walked into the room, and planted himself in front of the circuit breakers. "Bet you wouldn't have a problem if Dillon wanted to stand in the utility room. Or Scott, or Summer, or Flynn."

"None the less, Ranger Green I have asked _you_ to leave," she she turned her back to him as the dryer chirruped, opening it's door to retrieve it's contents.

"I get it. I really do," he was practically whining now, "I could understand it when you were like this with all of us. You were afraid you'd lose us like you lost Gem and Gemma, but you didn't lose Gem and Gemma, they're here now. So why on earth am I getting singled out?"

His frustration was understandable given the explanation they'd all been given. If it really was to keep herself protected from the loss she felt when Gem and Gemma were gone, then she no longer had any reason to exclude any of them, and it's not as if they had any reason to question her explanation. To make it more believable she'd made an effort to bond superficially with the other four rangers, but she still had to have a hold out to fulfill the true purpose of her self imposed social isolation.

"It's because you feel something more for me," he answered his own question. "You're afraid of what you feel… but that's ok, we can work with that... we can work around that… work within that…" his ham handed smooth talk always went in circles, but he wasn't entirely wrong. He was chosen as the hold out for a reason. It was the same reason she only had one skirt, and one sweater, and slept on an army cot in a computer closet. Equipment is only as good as its output. Her output killed nearly 6 billion people.

"Please leave, Ranger Operator Series Green," she replied, folding her sweater on top of her skirt.

"See, that right there, that's just unnecessarily hurtful. If the hugging thing is too much, that's fine. Ok? But can't you at least call me by my name? I'm sick of being the only one still called Ranger Operator whatever…"

"If you will not leave, I will, Ranger Operator Series Green," she picked up her finished laundry, and started for the doorway.

"Are you trying to hurt me?" he asked, nearly defeated.

She stepped around him, wordlessly, and walked away, clutching her uniform to her front.

 _'No'_ she thought but did not say, _'I'm trying to hurt_ _me_ _.'_


	2. H is for Humbled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> H is for Humbled: When one is treated poorly by others they must either accept that they deserve such treatment, or conclude that those treating them that way, are wrong... and need to be blown up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during "Prisoners."

"Um... sorry to bother you Doc but... uh... just how much neutronic detonating putty can you safely eat?" Ziggy muttered, scraping his tongue against his top teeth... trying to remove the pink substance from it.

"I take it this is not a hypothetical question," K sighed, stepping out from behind her computer terminal, she took one look at the spoon in his hand and rolled her eyes. "Have you swallowed any of it yet?" He shook his head, and spat again into the hand not holding the spoon. "Good. Don't." K wandered off into the kitchen, trusting Ranger Operator Series Green would follow. She glanced at the bowl of putty... and the stools pulled up to it, then rummaged around under the counter, and came up with a canister of flour, then turned and pulled a spoon out of the drawer, "Spoon, Soak, Spit. Repeat until you think you have it all out of your mouth. Then..." she went to the refrigerator, "Rinse and spit till all the flour is gone," she placed the milk on the counter next to the flour, and started back for her lab... before turning back. "Why are they making neutronic detonating putty?" she gestured to Gem and Gemma, who were then bounding up the stairs to the living quarters with Dillon, shouting for the other rangers.

"Dey wan do bow up dis fakory" he replied, mouth already full of flour. "Somming abou baybak." He spit the flour into a bowl, "They said they were held there a while back" Spoon. "Brisners... mageing griners..." Spit. "Unbearable hours, under unspeakably brutal conditions."

"Ah..." K replied, as this were perfectly unremarkable, and then shook her head at him and headed back to her lab. Unbearable hours under unspeakably brutal conditions. If anyone would know what that was, Gem and Gemma would... they'd come to the Soup, from the Complex. If the Soup was a hell of endless light, the Complex was a hell of endless darkness. The two had only spoken to her of the Complex once or twice. The things they had said were disturbing in the least… though they were quite certain they were quite a bit older than she was when they had developed their "light allergy" they had no more memory of their previous life than she did. The Complex was the first they remembered. The Complex made the Soup feel like heaven... as K had found out for herself after the release of the Venjix virus.

After they'd dragged her, kicking and screaming from her cylinder, the guards at the Soup had delivered her into the hands of her handlers, armed as always, who bound her hands, shrouded her in a white cloak and bustled her into the back of a plain white van before she could so much as process the few moments she spent out of doors between the Soup and the van.

Roughly they tossed her onto one bench running lengthwise along the inside of the back of the van, where the windows were whited out such that she could see only shadows beyond, and took their own seats on the opposite one.

"We're very disappointed in you K," the Ma'am intoned, though she didn't look it. Ma'am never looked anything other than eerily pleasant. "We've always taken ever such good care of you, and this is how you replay us?"

"But I only wanted-"

"You wanted," echoed Sir, who never looked anything but grim.

"She wanted," Ma'am sighed.

"How selfish you are, only thinking about what you wanted," Sir scowled. "After everything we've done for you. No… K you're going to have to be punished for what you did."

"Where are we going?" she asked, swallowing hard. It had been over 10 years since she'd ever been outside her small corner of the Alphabet Soup facility. It occurred to her now of course, that there was so much more of it that she'd never thought to enter, never thought to investigate or explore, though nothing had ever physically stopped her. They had built a prison in her mind, and she had dutifully helped them all along.

"We don't have the facilities to deal with bad girls like you in the Soup K. You're going to have to go to the Complex."

She hadn't known then exactly what that would entail. She had only Gem and Gemma's wild stories to go on, and doubted they could be trusted to be accurate.

As it turned out, Gem and Gemma were prone to grossly understating their negative experiences.

When the van had arrived at the Complex it was night. Sir and Ma'am flanked her once more, pulling the hood of her cloak as far forward as possible, as they frog marched her across the grounds. She trotted along quickly to keep her legs beneath her as they pulled far faster than she was ever used to going. Even with the hood of her cloak flapping about her face in the night breeze, she could see the rows of small cinder block hovels, but more pressing than that, she could hear the sounds of children crying. She tried to turn her head, locate the source of the cries, but Sir yanked her head forward by the hood, as the approached a man in green fatigues.

"Agents," he greeted them somberly.

"Lieutenant," they replied in unison. "How are things here?" added Ma'am. She seemed… uncomfortable. K had never heard her like that before.

"Well the computers in the barracks are on the fritz again, and the IT boys are making some sissy excuses why they can't get them up and running again, something about a virus... and we lost another half dozen assets to the elements in the last long march… hypothermia… but the ones that made it, I think they're gonna be the strongest batch yet." He replied. "Got them digging a new latrine now… as you can hear… some of 'em aint to happy about that. Might lose a few more to disciplinary measures before they learn to take orders… speaking of which… this the insubordination case?"

"This is her," Sir replied, thrusting K toward the Lieutenant. For just a moment, it felt to her as if Ma'am had gripped her arm tighter, before letting her go.

"Don't get carried away Lieutenant," Ma'am instructed, "There's already thousands of dollars gone into this asset. We need her back in usable condition."

"What's it's function?"

"R&D," Sir replied.

"Little small for an RnD Doc," K flinched away from him as he pulled her face towards his by the neck of her clock. "Doesn't need to walk… does it?" He smirked. Sir, just smirked back.

"Be a good girl K," Ma'am smiled her eerie reassuring smile, "We want you to come home as soon as possible."

Home. Is that what the Soup was? It had never really seemed like home before, but then, far from it's safe cylindrical walls… she wanted nothing more than to be back there.

"I am not an it," K spoke, almost inaudibly as the Lieutenant dragged her away from Sir and Ma'am.

"Now listen here asset," the man replied, without breaking step, "This ain't the Soup. No one here is going to put up with your lip. You speak only when asked a direct question. You keep your eyes on the ground. You do what you're told, when you're told and nothing else. You do not _breathe_ without my permission. Understand?"

"May I be permitted to breath lieutenant?" she replied, scowling.

"You think you're a clever thing, don't you," he rounded on her, throwing her to the ground, she let out a yelp as she hit the ground, and her hood fell away from her head, around her neck. At that moment she heard the van, and Sir and Ma'am with it, speed out of the gates, they took with them the last of the light, save the pinpricks of the stars. There was no moon.

"They treat you Docs with kid gloves up there at the Soup," he brandished a finger past above and past her, indicating the gates where the van had left. "But don't you think for a second this is going to be anything like that. Get up." She remained still frozen in shock on the ground. As strict as they were at the Soup, they never treated her like _this_. "I SAID GET UP!" the lieutenant reached down and grabbed her by the arm, yanking her upright, she stumbled along with him as he dragged her down the row of buildings.

"We'll break you yet…" he pulled her to the end of the row of cinder block hovels, the third squat structure from the end, where sat the, at least in her perception, warmer and better constructed barracks she assumed to be the dwelling of the Luetenant and his ilk. The first two hovels in the row had, on their doors, placards, reading 'Insubordination.' The lieutenant, opened the door of the third and turned to K. "Cloak, shoes and socks," he demanded, tugging on the back of her cloak, "Off. Now."

She allowed him to pull the cloak from her back and pulled her shoes and socks off, stuffing each sock in it's respective shoe, before handing them over. He in turn shoved her in the door and closed it behind her. Pitch darkness.

She remained in such darkness for days, without contact. Food was slipped in through a slot in the door which latched from the outside so she could not use it to peek out, even in the daytime little light entered the small cinder block structure, which, by K's estimation was 6 feet cubed in size. Only on the brightest of days did a small crack of light seep under the door. K wasn't sure how many days went by before the door was flung open, and a bag thrown over head. She was pulled, she knew not where, and forced to kneel on the ground. They were outdoors... or else someone had taken to putting gravel indoors just to make her uncomfortable.

There came from the left of her more footfalls: two more soldiers, and two others who's feet made much less sound on the gravel... two others with no shoes, forced to the ground in the gravel as it crunched beneath their knees. It was hot... and they kept them there for hours, kneeling in silence.

"Hans, Hanna... what are you?" at last came a voice she was fairly sure was the lieutenant, some hours after they'd been knelt there.

"We're just kids!" two tiny voices replied in chorus... they could not be that old... no older than she was when she'd first entered the Soup. The sounds she heard after that, a narrow implement cutting the air, followed by the sickening thud of impact against human skulls, made her wince, and the crying which began soon after only confirmed that their answer had been met with violent correction.

"Soup Asset. What do you want?"

"I just want to see the sun..." she replied, honestly, and hearing the unknown weapon whistling through the air, shrunk anticipating a similar blow to the head.

Instead there came a sharp stinging pain across the soles of both feet, which caused her to cry out, and then she felt herself pulled to her feet, and was marched back to her cell. There was a breif flash of bright light as the bag was removed from her head, but her eyes had no time to adjust, and see the world beyond her cell door before it was slammed shut. Sitting down on the cold dirt floor, she examined her feet by touch in the dark, pulling out small splinters of wood. It wasn't until later that night that she realized she was sunburned on the back of her neck so badly it blistered.

Some time later... quite later, long enough that the blisters had healed and she had once again become almost accustomed to being alone and without any human contact... in the dark cell (which had no insulation, and occasionally leaked when it rained.) This was repeated...

"Hans, Hanna... what are you?"

"We're children!" again the sounds, and the cries.

"Soup Asset. What do you want?"

"I told you I just want to see the sun..."

Again and again, each days or weeks apart, she wasn't truly sure, her only gauge of time being the decrease in the temperature as the seasons turned, the three were taken out to the gravel field, until one day, something changed.

"We're soldiers!" replied Hans and Hanna, and the sounds did not follow... nor the cries.

"Yes, you are," replied the lieutenant, "And you are out of uniform... put your shoes and caps back on, and rejoin your cadre!" She heard a scrambling in the gravel to her right, and some short time later, the sounds of rappidly retreateing footsteps as, presumably, they ran off to wherever the rest of the children were. After the twins were released back to their posts, K realized they weren't looking for the truth. They were looking for a specific answer. She tried to tell them what they wanted to hear.

"I want to be good now."

"I want to do what I'm told."

"I want to decipher the rocket codes."

"I want to listen to Ma'am and Sir."

"I want to earn your trust back."

"I want to help Alphabet Soup."

"I want to work on Project Ranger."

She lost track of the number of different answers she tried searching for the lie that would set her free… months into the punishment, sitting this time in the snow, drenched in freezing rain and feeling particularly defeated, tired, and miserable, she hadn't the energy to think up another lie, so she responded truthfully.

"I want to go back inside."

Her cloak was around her shoulders in a matter of moments, blocking out the rain, and she was bundled inside the Lieutenant's very own barracks to await pickup. A few hours later she was back in her cylinder, and Ma'am was bringing her a fresh, clean uniform and ushering her down the hall to the washroom to clean up.

It wasn't until three days later, when Sir brought her cloak, and offered to take her for a walk on the grounds that she even realized what happened. The idea filled her with dread… outside was now a place of cold wet rain and snow, and hot blaring sun, and monotonous hours of kneeling.

"No thank you," she had demurred, and though he left the cloak with her, thought of going out of doors never again crossed her mind, until the bombs began falling on the Soup. Now she didn't go out of doors at all if she could avoid it, even within in the dome. She just, sat here, at her computer, and looked at it on monitors and CCTV. K sighed, and blew into her bangs, pulling her keyboard back out and trying to settle back in to work, but her fingers didn't even meet the keys before she paused, listening to the impromptu meeting that seemed to have sprung up near the kitchen.

"Awwww... we were-"

"Planning to just-"

"Vaporize the whole thing from sub-orbit."

"But sure we can go-"

"Rescue your sister."

"That will be fun-"

"Too!" she heard from the main room of the garage.

K sighed, and pushed herself back from her desk, shaking her head... leave it to Gem and Gemma... they were soldiers after all.


	3. N is for Necessary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> N is for Necessary: When someone says that they had to do something, to survive, we tell them they did the right thing...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during "Belly of the Beast"

As rousing as Flynn's little speech was, before it was unceremoniously interrupted by the Sawbot, it had not contained within it any real answer to Doctor K's question. If they couldn't save the people within the factory in time, would the Rangers be willing to sacrifice them to save the citizens of Corinth City? Thus far for the Rangers, what was right and what was required for the continued survival of Corinth had not yet clashed in such a way they could not be resolved, but today they very well might. If Gem and Gemma couldn't get to the console in time to carry out her plan and eliminate the time constraints on exploding the factory, they would be forced to make a very hard decision.

Of course, in the event that they failed, by her calculations, it wouldn't much have mattered if they had blown up the factory, the workers, and even themselves. Venjix would only have constructed a new doomsday weapon and wiped them all out within the month, so they wouldn't have had to live with what they'd done for very long thereafter.

Not like she had to.

Even now she didn't know what had been done with most of her work, but considering what had happened in the end, K was fairly certain that Alphabet Soup had not, despite what she once believed, been using her work for the good of others. They had never had her best interests, nor the best interests of humanity in mind, despite whatever they might have told her, and they told her plenty.

"It's ever so important that you finish this guidance system K, so we can deliver medicine with drone planes to hostile areas."

"You're doing important work here K, so many lives will be saved. We're so proud."

"K dear, we need you to finish the designs for this body armor to protect civilians in high risk areas."

"Well, we can't tell you what this one is for, or people might be hurt, but you trust us, don't you K?"

"The toxicity analysis you completed last week has already saved dozens of lives!"

"You wouldn't understand sweat heart... but there are people counting on you to get this done!"

"This new alloy we've developed with your help will be used to build blast shielding to protect hospitals in war zones!"

"This virus will help us infiltrate enemy servers and end wars without bloodshed."

Lies; every last thing Sir or Ma'am had ever said to her. But at first she'd believed it all, just as she had once believed that her parents had consented to her captivity 'for her own good' and were coming to visit ever so soon, and believed in the phantom sun allergy that condemned her to remain indoors, and in their constant claims that they were working on a cure, and someday she would be able to leave. She'd even believed it when her parents were "killed" in a car crash on their way to come visit her for her 6th birthday.

It was the first clear recollection she had.

But even before she'd followed that unlikely little butterfly down the corridor and into the light, K had begun to question their honesty, their trustworthiness, their true motivations. Somewhere around her 13th birthday she had begun to doubt that were ever really working on a cure, and believe instead that she was never going to be able to leave... and from that point onward she had doubted their sincerity about everything else.

And then, even if one was willing to grant her not knowing for the first 14 years, there was the matter of her work in the two years after she'd discovered their lies. When she'd returned from the Complex, she knew it was a lie. She knew they were up to something harmful, and she went along with it, because she didn't know any other way to survive, or any other way to avoid being sent back to the Complex. She was every bit as responsible for the things she'd done as Sir and Ma'am and whomever they answered to were for making her do it, no matter how she shifted the pieces in her head.

How many people had her work killed even before Venjix's accidental release?

How many more might die today if this plan did not go according to specifications?

Did she have any right to be making these kinds of gambles with the lives of the remaining free human beings?

When she'd finally had to tell the Rangers what she'd done, K had been surprised at their reactions... most of them. Dillon's reaction had been precisely what she'd expected out of all of them and she couldn't really blame him for it. That Summer, Ziggy and Flynn had intervened immediately on her behalf was a great surprise, though in retrospect she should have anticipated it. Summer's first instinct was to negotiate peace between opposing factions; Ziggy was the most likely to sympathize having committed various and sundry crimes of his own; and Flynn was an idealist. He wouldn't raise a hand to her before hearing the full story, looking for a reason to keep believing in their cause. Scott's reaction however, could not have been anticipated. He simply waited.

She told as much of the story as she felt comfortable... that she'd grown up in Alphabet Soup for as long as she could recollect. That she was captive there and had no means of escape other than the projects she was developing for them, and that Venjix had been accidentally released in an interrupted escape attempt, and should never have spread beyond the facility had she not been forcefully separated from her laptop before she could install the firewall required to keep the virus contained. It had been tactically advantageous, in her assessment at the time to upload the virus first, to prevent the server staff from recognizing the firewall upload for what it was, and reacting before she could upload the virus. She'd never conceived that they would interrupt her work if it was performed in the reverse order, knowing as they did, what would happen if the virus wasn't contained. That's why they'd had her create the firewall in the first place. She then told the Rangers how, when Venjix became a violent threat, she'd escaped from the Soup and fled in an effort to bring the Ranger technology to Corinth and try and save the remains of humanity from her own creation.

"Well there you have it... that seems perfectly reasonable doesn't it? I mean what else was she supposed to do?" Ziggy, put down his bowl of popcorn, Scott cast him a sidelong glance, let out a heavy sigh and without a word departed the garage.

"You can't seriously think that," Dillon replied bitterly. K had the distinct feeling he would have tried something again, had Summer not laid a firm hand on his shoulder. "She was in a fully stocked high tech weapons development bunker. She had access to hundreds of less lethal methods of escape."

"Ok, now to be perfectly fair here," Flynn interjected, reluctantly, "she did say that Venjix wasn't supposed to be lethal."

"And we're supposed to believe this? It wasn't supposed to be lethal. It wasn't supposed to get out of the facility. I mean, we're supposed to believe that the person who designed these suits... these weapons... the zords for crying out loud, didn't think there was a significant risk in releasing a supervirus before uploading the firewall."

"Yes, and I think we can all agree in hindsight that releasing the virus before installing its containment firewall was a poor judgment call on my part, but such a mistake should not be conflated with a deliberate desire for the outcome which transpired."

"I wouldn't put it past you Doc."

"Ok, you can't seriously believe that," Ziggy replied, "This is Doctor K we're talking about here... if she wanted to end the world she still could, at any given time. You're still sore over that thing with the-"

"This is not about the fridge cannon, Ziggy."

"Well he does have more a reason than any of us to be mad," Flynn said, diplomatically, "I mean... none of us is personally infected with the virus she wrote."

"It's not the same virus... it's mutated, evolved. The program I wrote was never designed to operate on the human nervous system. This is something new."

"Oh, so of course it's not your responsibility-" Dillon started, sarcastically.

"OF COURSE IT IS," K found herself raising her voice without realizing it.

"Then start acting like it!" Dillon sprang out of his seat.

"Sit down Dillon," Summer intervened, at the same time as Flynn finally stood up from the kitchen stool he'd been sitting on, somewhat away from the other three.

"Look, this doesn't actually change anything... except now we know. I don't see why we can't just keep doing what we've been doing. Like my Da always said: If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

"I don't see that happening."

"Dillon," Summer pleaded.

"No. Look at her. Not one ounce of remorse."

"If you wish to quit the project," K replied coldly, "I believe Colonel Truman still has a cell available for you in Corinth Municipal Prison." She addressed Flynn, Ziggy and Summer next. "I've explained all I can. We should all get some sleep while we can. There's work to do in the morning." She turned on heel, and headed back for the lab.

"Hey wait!"

"Let her go Ziggy..." Summer stopped him. "Come on boys... time for bed."

K glanced over her shoulder to see Ziggy and Summer, escorting Dillon up the stairs, and Flynn busying himself in the refrigerator. She swallowed hard and willed her feet to carry her faster, back to the safe dim green light of her closet. Securing the door behind her, K stooped to pull her army cot out from its storage bag, and fumbled with it for a few minutes, trying to unfold it in the tiny space. It was always tedious, but after the events of the past few hours, the quirks of her folding furniture were simply to frustrating for her to bear. She gave up, kicked the cot, flopped into her chair, and cried herself to sleep.

In the morning Scott had returned. She found him at the counter eating breakfast.

"Hey- no, don't," he cut her off, as soon as she opened her mouth, "You can't change the past. We trusted you for almost a year without ever seeing you, and we have to continue that for the good of the city. You haven't steered us wrong yet. So let's just concentrate on the mission. This doesn't change anything. Ok?"

Even so, he avoided her for days thereafter, except when it was important to the mission, but then he mustered a cordial response whenever needed. Summer and Ziggy in contrast, hovered nervously around K for days thereafter deflecting Dillon from his constant attempts to get her alone. Now and then he managed to get in a sideways remark before being pulled off to the side by one of the others. It was no secret that he felt she wasn't taking adequate responsibility for her actions. Ziggy it seemed felt quite otherwise, and continued as he hovered to try and alleviate her of responsibility for her actions, however ineptly.

"You only did what you had to," he said more than once, "You didn't have a choice."

But hadn't she? Couldn't she have accepted her lot and remained in captivity?

That would have been the better choice, in retrospect, especially considering the net result would be the same. She was going to wind up back in captivity in the end anyway, as soon as the rest of the city found out what she did, which they would as soon as Venjix was conclusively defeated, and she turned herself in to Colonel Truman. Of course... that was the future, and the present was currently a little bit more pressing. If they were all killed by a giant flying Venjix doomsday weapon, then that eventuality would never some to pass.

"K, the flash drive is-"

"Inserted. Are you sure this is-"

"Gonna work?"

"Not in the least, but this is our only chance of countering this doomsday technology head on."

Flynn would have his wish; a black and white fight. Whether or not they survived was all down to her programming abilities. There would be no hard moral decisions to make today.


	4. B is for Boom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> B is for Boom: Gem and Gemma are an explosive force...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during "Three's a Crowd."

K grimaced as the balloons ruptured; anticipating the effects of the unknown gas contained within, and redoubled her efforts to identify it. Gem and Gemma had always been a little bit reckless, but it was becoming clear that their time in the wasteland had nurtured that side of them. It reminded her rather of the very first few weeks they'd worked with her, bubbling over with energy, over enthusiastic, and getting their hands into everything she'd created without regard for its safety or their own. She'd almost immediately resented their presence, and likely wouldn't have even given them a chance, if they hadn't begged her to.

"Frankly, I'm not sure you two are qualified to be operating this equipment. It's delicate, dangerous, and very complex," K sighed, taking back the prototype blasting weapon Gem had immediately gravitated towards, and picked up backwards, as his sister followed in rapt attention.

"But we've been studying to do this for-" Gemma started.

"Five years now! If you don't-"

"At least let us try, they're going to-"

"Release us!" Gem whispered, as if he were speaking of the bogeyman.

"Let me get this straight. You WANT to be here? You're afraid of going home?"

"Release isn't going home... it's..." Gemma trailed off, and shrugged.

"It's BLAMMO!" Gem mimed a gun to the side of his head, Gemma nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

"Last I checked, Alphabet Soup was not in the habit of destroying its own assets," K replied, as if the two were telling stories of a flying unicorn.

"But the Complex is!"

"The Complex?"

Over the following hours, she gleaned from them nearly as much as she ever would about their past. The way the twins told it, they had been held, up until five years prior, in an encampment known only as "The Complex," which was part of some effort to locate and nurture physical aptitude as the Soup nurtured mental aptitude... pushing children in bonded pairs, of which, at least in their cadre, only Gem and Gemma were actually twins, to and past their limits in an effort to help them meet their ultimate potential as soldiers. Unlike the Soup, or, at least unlike the Soup in K's experience, they had little tolerance for those who fell behind in training, and may or may not have had a general habit of destroying assets who failed to pass muster. According to Gem and Gemma such "releases" were commonplace during their years there, generally the result of illness or injury to those "released," but also as a punishment for severe insubordination.

K was disinclined to take everything the two said at face value, their mental state being at best somewhat questionable. None the less, despite their cheery demeanor and the ease with which they spoke about their past experiences, she believed that at the very least they thought they were telling the truth.

"Then one day we were on a long march-"

"Long marches are boooooooooooring-"

"You just have to walk and walk and walk and walk and-"

"Gemma passed out."

"It was too hot."

"They said the sun made her sick and we couldn't be soldiers anymore-"

"And Gem couldn't either, since we're twins."

"So they were afraid I'd get it too."

"We thought they'd release us for sure-"

"But we got to come here instead-"

"Except if you don't want our help-"

"Ok! You can help me," K conceded, almost as much to shut them up as anything else. "I'm sure I can find something the two of you can wrap your minds around... what exactly were you trained in?"

"Well we were never very good at drills-"

"And we don't like to follow orders-"

"But we always came first in vehicular operations, hand to hand-"

"And DEMOLITIONS!"

The two dissolved into their own personal little demolition display, complete with onomatopoeic sound effects and wild gesticulation.

"As you may have noticed... there is insufficient room in here for demolitions of any sort," she gestured to their surroundings, the partially crumbling cement cylinder 12 feet in diameter. "We are working small today, and for the foreseeable future. If, and only if, you can learn to control yourselves once the prototyping stage is completed, will I ask our handlers to take us and the suits over to the testing range in block five for full scale trials, in which case you will have the opportunity to fully utilize your vehicular and hand to hand training."

Of course they had in fact learned to control themselves sufficiently for the full scale trials and much more.

That first day they were ready for full scale testing, nearly 6 months later, K had gone with them, the three flanked by Sir, Ma'am, and two of the facility's multitude of nameless and forgettable guards, who in K's recollection all blurred together into a unit of faceless automatons. They were equipment, just like her. She had never, in her memory, been that far from her cylinder within the facility before. By the time she got there, she wasn't even sure if she could find her way back to her cylinder on her own.

"Ok, Gem, I need you to put on the Morph Harness for the Red suit; Gemma, the Yellow."

"Can't I wear the Blue?" Gem whined.

"Blue is way prettier than Red," Gemma agreed.

"I'm sorry, but the Blue suit isn't ready for full scale testing yet, and you know that. I'm still having trouble with the time dilation field. If you want to switch which of you wears the Red and which wears the Yellow, that's fine, but we're not testing Blue today."

"Awwwwwwwwwww! Why not?" they chorused.

"Because it's still too dangerous, that's why. If anything were to happen to one of you..." K trailed off, checking on the two nearly identical suits in their cases. She turned back to see the two looking at her, hopefully. "Do you have any idea how much extra work and money it would take to replace either of you?"

"We like-"

"You too!" they grinned and picked the Morph Harnesses off the cart, helping one another into them.

The two had no qualms about physical contact with each other, frequently engaging in expressions of affection forbidden by Alphabet Soup inter-asset contact protocol. It wasn't just another way they flouted convention at every available opportunity, and it wasn't an indication of a failure to understand the protocols. It had only taken a few irritable reminders from K to get them to comply unwaveringly with the rules where she was concerned. It was, instead, an indication of the underlying fact that they often failed to recognize one another as individuals, rather than extensions of self.

"Ok, now, the hope here, is that, rather than manually 'unzipping' the suits by disengaging the nanomesh along medial lines, and re-assembling the nanofibers around your bodies in the suit application chamber, as before, we should be able to apply the suits to you at any location, so long as you are properly wearing the Morph Harness, via particle teleportation, relying on the data in your datacells to re-assemble a the fully disassembled nanoparticles back into the mesh."

"And if we're not-"

"Wearing them properly?"

"What-"

"Happens then?"

"Worst case scenario? Asphyxiation. Third Degree Burns. Loss of extremities due to suit re-materialization within your bodies."

"You mean like-"

"Our noses?" they asked, going cross-eyed to observe the subject of their query.

"I mean fingers, hands, toes, legs," she replied, irritably. "But," her tone gentled, "I don't anticipate this happening to either of you, so long as you continue operating at your previous competency levels. The worst injury anticipated within the probabilities allowed by the fail safes, is something akin to a full circumference friction burn."

"Like scraped-"

"Knees?"

"Like scraped everything. So just... don't over-tighten the straps," she responded, bluntly and turned on heel, walking some few feet away to boot the transport computer. "You should be able to fit two fingers inside, at the least. If they come in a little baggy this time well, that's better than the alternative. If the two of you would please take a position about half way down the testing range, spacing yourselves equally from one another and from the walls."

The test had been a success, despite her misgivings, and of course the twins were more than delighted with the fireballs created by the energy discharge, which blossomed the planned minimum 3 yards behind them, and the likelihood of which was the primary reason why that particular test needed to be performed on the range. Of course while she had them out there, and suited up (even if the suits were sagging a little in the torso, but at least neither of them was hurt) there was no reason not to test out the suits' specialty attacks, which, while there was some delay on the build up of the Chi attack, and a bit of a problem with deceleration after the burst attack, were none the less successful, and had the added benefit of scaring the daylights out of Ma'am sir and their guards.

It was always amazing to her how much the two could get away with in the name of fully testing out the technology. The damage they caused to the testing range was always written off as a necessary operational expense. They were nearly uncontrollable in the suits... listening only to K's instructions, and then only because they were generally backed up with a very detailed worst case scenario, laid out for them beforehand, as to what could happen if the technology failed. In retrospect, it was a wonder they hadn't shut down the project much earlier, for fear of the threat that the two heavily armed assets could pose should they ever have decided to go rogue while in the testing facility, but they must never have anticipated that the twins would ever deliberately harm their own handlers. They counted on their mental reins to hold firm.

After she'd returned from her own stint in the Complex, later in the testing phase of Project Ranger, the two had even been allowed to take the individual Zords out on night runs around the grounds, while K herself was still confined indoors, monitoring function on her monitors and listening to the sounds of the vehicles rumbling around on the surface above, and Sir and Ma'am pleading over the communications system for Gem and Gemma to follow the set trial course while they ignored their instructions and drove wheresoever they pleased. Listening in on Gem and Gemma, doing their own thing in defiance of Alphabet Soup protocol gave her some small pleasure... goofing off during the tests, when they were too heavily armed to be stopped, was the only manner of rebellion available to them. There was no such avenue available to her... not anymore. As Sir and Ma'am reminded her, far more often than necessary, she could no longer get away with anything after her first attempt at escape. That was why she had to monitor the twins remotely, instead of being allowed to the surface with them, to observe the tests in person.

As much as they'd defied the protocol however, they'd always listened to her instructions, whether it be for a few more hairpin maneuvers to test out the steering controls, or for them to stop immediately before one of the zords suffered a mechanical failure. After their time in the wasteland there wasn't even that. That morning's zord combination test had been the first time since they came back when Gem and Gemma's uncontrollable nature had seriously damaged the project. It had taken the auto repairs 3 hours to straighten out the damage, during which time they were vulnerable to Venjix attack. It hadn't come, thank goodness, until they were back in working order, but now this? K made a note to have a little talk with them at some point, before their insubordination became such a problem that the other Rangers began to notice.


	5. Q is for Quantum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q is for Quantum: If you knew anything at all about quantum mechanics, you'd understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during "Three's Company."

Of course, as it turned out, it was entirely too late to do anything about Gem and Gemma before the other Rangers noticed. Their insubordination had apparently already reached noticeable levels, as she was rather rudely informed when the rest of the Rangers barged in on her lab while she was trying to track down the unknown source of the electromagnetic disturbance she was reading on a remote island in the waste. She suddenly longed for the days when her lab door remained shut while she worked, only to open when she was tucked away in her little hidden closet in the wall. They were incapable if interrupting her then.

It wasn't until the Rangers ran out after them, that the mention of the 'device' really registered. She had dismissed it out of hand, since it was a completely erroneous supposition on their part, but on second consideration it occurred to her why they had presumed whatever 'device' they had they got from her. They had made the same underestimation of Gem and Gemma's mental capabilities that she had when they'd first met. Where at first she had considered them, at best to be useful in their capacity as test operators, due to their training in hand to hand combat and vehicular operations, they had in fact been far more useful than that. While neither was capable of innovation on the levels that K herself was able to perform, they had proved themselves more than capable of understanding her work, and even assisting with it.

It was no surprise then that they'd managed to cobble together something capable of picking up the same electromagnetic disturbances she had picked up on the long range sensors.

As irritated as it made her, them running off half-cocked into danger without so much as consulting her, the fact that they had put what they learned from her to such use, in a way, made her proud. They'd come a long way from those first few weeks in her lab, asking questions about everything, demonstrating a rate of knowledge acquisition normally only seen in early childhood.

"What is-"

"It?"

"It's a prototype for a much larger vehicle," she replied, taking back the boxy yellow vehicle, about a foot long, resting on over sized wheels, "which will operate on Biofield energy... like the suits." She placed it back on its pedestal. "I'm trying to infuse it with a Digital Nucleotide Analog Base Code which will allow it to function as a synthetic-" she could see she was loosing them, "I'm trying to trick the Biofield into believing that the vehicle is a living being, in the same way that we trick the Biofield into believing the wearers of the suits are a different sort of living being... one with a greater physical capacity than a normal human being. It's more complicated however, because the vehicle isn't living at all. The Digital Nucleotide Analog or DNA technology uses computer code to mimic the inherent data storage capabilities of all living things..."

"Oooo! Deoxy-"

"Ribonucleic acid!"

"Yes. The DNA of any living thing contains all the instructions necessary for creating and maintaining that creature. For instance, your DNA contains the instructions for what in computer terms would be the process 'build human' and all of the functions necessary to perform that process, down to 'build protein A' and 'build protein B.' Somewhere in that code then, must also be the instructions to 'access Biofield' and once I isolate that, the Analog Base Codes should hopefully allow the vehicles to access to Biofield energy, by imitating to it the signature of living things. At present all I've achieved is teaching the programming inherent in the on-board computers to remember the form of the vehicle and co-ordinate both external and internal regeneration of components based on information contained within the DNA Base Code." She reached around to her computer and typed rapidly for a moment... "The vehicle, like the suit's corresponding weapons is constructed out of a self assembling carbon alloy originally developed for use in body armor. It's capable of receiving a digital signal from a Cell computer and re-assembling itself into... a different... form!" and with a final clack of the keyboard, she stepped out from behind the monitor and gestured to the small car, which was busy sprouting a cockscomb shaped red metal plume from the top of the cab, delighting the twins.

"So the DNA Base Codes-

"Tell the car what to look like!"

"The plume is a parlor trick... nothing but a proof of concept. The applications of such technology are far more than this. It works internally as well. It is my hope is that such vehicles will eventually be able to sent on a digital wireless carrier signal, to a download device, in the same way that the suits can be sent to the Morph harnesses."

"Yeah about those-"

"Do they really need to have-"

"Such a big belt?"

"Yes, well I'm hoping to reduce the size of the receiving end device in time... ideally reducing it to the size of a hand held, or wrist mounted unit. For now, however, the body scanning technology necessary to fit the suits properly can't be made that small without risking the life of the operator. Though it's currently possible to lose an extremity to improper suit assembly, but the harness prevents such an error from rendering any damage to your vital organs, even in cases of critical operator error."

"Oh-"

"Ok."

"Now, if the two of you think you can manage it, I want to start working on transcribing the necessary portions of the genome of the Ursus americanus cinnamomum. We're going to need to strip out all the parts we don't need. Respiratory system, digestive system, physical minutia. We will need the teeth however, as a weapon, and portions of the nervous system to integrate with the existing cockpit displays. We won't need any of the purely aesthetic portions of the information either. The Biofield doesn't care what you look like... it hasn't got eyes."

Of course, that hadn't stopped Gem and Gemma from going ahead and adding the aesthetic features to the code anyhow.

When the Rangers had asked after those faces some time later she had, of course, pretended not to notice them. She couldn't very well tell them that she knew they had faces and Gem and Gemma put them there, without bringing them up, which she wasn't going to do when she thought they were gone.

While K had been more than a little irritated at that initially, but then of course the reality sunk in. She'd given them specific locations in the existing genome records from which to transcribe the portions that they needed to make the vesicles, register properly on the Biofield. She had never told them where to find the code to make the audio scanners look like ears, or give the face a vestigial nose. They had figured out that part on their own, which was far more than she'd ever expected of them.

Of course from that point, once they proved that they could not only follow instructions well enough to be adequate code monkeys, but also make adjustments under their own initiative, Gem and Gemma had become integral participants in the design of the Project Ranger Covert Infantry Biosuits, and their accompanying weapons and vehicles. And it was because of that, that K had no doubt in her mind that the two were more than capable of having themselves built the device the rest of the Rangers presumed she had given them, in fact it rather sounded like something they'd been working on in the final weeks before they had all escaped from Alphabet Soup.

"What if we utilized that... entanglement of-"

"Remote particles, thing?"

"And how exactly is that going to help us here?" K replied, peering over the top of the computer screen, perched on her piano keyboard, at the two as they worked at their laptops.

"Well if we were to triangulate variances-"

"In the entangled particles, off a point-"

"Then it would reveal the locations-"

"Of anomalous energy sources-"

"And anything that can cause that-"

"Kind of variance, is probably Venjix-"

"Weapons hardware!"

"That's-" she went to rebuff them automatically, "Actually, that might work," she conceded. "If we could integrate such scanners into the vehicle A2D displays, it would give the Operators a significant advantage in tactical planning. They could know precisely what was awaiting them, long before they arrived there..."

Of course they had never had the chance to implement those ideas, and the Zords went online for full combat without such advanced scanning technology. Instead, a few months after the Ranger Project was fully underway and defending the city, Corinth itself had been outfitted with a sensor array using that technology, which was precisely how K had located the anomalous electromagnetic disturbance herself. K sighed, and shook her head, deciding that talk she was going to have with them would have to be as soon as they came back from this ill planned operation. Surely if they could be taught advanced Biofield physics, they could be made to understand the importance of protecting the civilians.

The fact that they had managed to successfully assemble the SkyRev Megazord, did not exempt them from their little talking to, but it did at the very least put her in a much better mood when she went to talk to them. She peered out of her lab into the kitchen, checking to ensure that Ranger Green wasn't still hovering around, looking for his 'props,' before stepping out to confront the twins.

"Gem, Gemma..." she sighed, "We need to talk."

"What-"

"About?" The twins looked up from the bowl of popcorn they were salting and buttering.

"Do you remember, back in the Soup, how important it was for you to take proper direction?"

"Oh yeah, with the prototype-"

"Suits, it was really important." They replied, turning their attention back to the snacks, clearly mistaking this for a conversation with the aim to reminisce rather than instruct.

"Ok, well it's still important," K scowled, pulling the bowl away, leading to spilt salt and melted butter. "You could have been completely destroyed out there, if the other Rangers hadn't gotten there in time."

"But the suits are done now!"

"It doesn't matter-"

"What happens to us-"

"Anymore! So long as-"

"We fight Venjix!" they protested, trying and failing to take back their bowl, only for their efforts in not spilling its contents in the process.

"Yes it does! There's no back up coming. If we lose even one member of this team, the chances of the survival of this city are halved! If we lost both of you..." K trailed off, sitting on the kitchen stool, with a flump. This was going to be a bit harder for her than she had initially thought. They were so set on their own personal course, decided on in the heat of battle, unguided. Things were different out there in the waste, where there was no real consequence of losing except being personally destroyed, and nothing to hope for than to live one more day and put one more futile dent in Venjix's armor. There was no stable civilian population to protect then; no hope for the human race. Human collateral was acceptable to them under those circumstances... when there was no hope for those people other than a quick end. She should have seen it coming when they had suggested blowing up the factory with all the workers still inside. Somehow, though, they had to understand that this was different. Corinth had a chance... a small chance, but they had one nonetheless, and Project Ranger was that chance.

"But we have to fight-"

"Venjix! Isn't that-"

"What we're supposed-"

"To do?"

"Yes, but you're losing sight of why we fight Venjix," she explained frustratedly, "We have to protect what remains of the human race. If they don't survive, then we lose anyway... it's like..."

"Like-"

"What?"

"Like this bowl of popcorn," K explained, hitting on something she hoped they could understand, "You could have the bowl back by force by now, but only if you're willing to let the popcorn spill all over the floor, ruined. Corinth is our bowl of popcorn. You have to defeat Venjix, without spilling the popcorn, or else you still lose, because there's no popcorn left, and you have to stay alive yourselves until the city is out of danger... because... well if you die you still can't eat the popcorn."

"But... we don't want-"

"To eat Corinth."

"It's a metaphor. The point is that you have to protect the city, or else it doesn't matter what happens to Venjix. We still lose if Corinth doesn't survive."

"Oooooooo! It's like-"

"Escort operations!"

"Escort operations?"

"We're not so good-"

"At escort operations."

"Our egg kept getting-"

"Broken."

"Egg?" K blinked.

"In the Complex-"

"Escort operations-"

"Is when you have to get the objective-"

"And beat the opposition-"

"But also you have to protect your payload-"

"Which is an egg."

"If it gets broke-"

"You get marked as a fail."

"That's exactly what I'm saying. The city is our egg, and we have to protect it."

"OK! We'll protect Corinth! And all of it's People! From Venjix! And anything else!"

"In that case," she said, trying to suppress a smile as she handed over the memo she received from the market, "you might consider fixing that door you broke."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DEDICATION: This chapter dedicated to my awesome in house Beta Reader, Power Rangers Expert, and Physics Consultant. You're the absolute best, and I'm grateful to have a Beta who's as much of a canon stickler as I am and far more capable of spotting where I've gone outside the lines. You keep me in check, tell me when I've lost the character's voices, and put up with me when channeling K makes me snap at you like you were Ziggy. You wanted Q to be Quantum... and you got it. May my feeble fanwanks help take a little bit of the "you fail (various sciences) forever" out of RPM for you. Thank you so much Jacob (pen name Database Ranger) I can't think of anyone else I'd want to have been with the past 4 years. Happy Anniversary, and I love you!


	6. R is for Rangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> R is for Rangers: The acute physical and mental skills needed to operate the ranger bio-hardware are extremely rare...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during "Heroes Among Us."

"Look, I'm concerned too, but when they left they put themselves in jeopardy. If we leave we put the whole city in jeopardy," she turned back to her computers, "We're just going to have to trust that he knows what he's doing..."

It would be harder than she made it sound, however. Scott's reaction to the situation was not anything she would ever have anticipated out of him when she selected him to lead her team. A leader could not engage in personal quests for recognition at the expense of the mission, even if the recognition he sought was from the the dome's highest ranking military officer. In fact it was his total dedication to mission and protocol which had won him her respect and his position in the first place.

The first time she'd assembled her candidates in the Garage, some 20 months ago, he had distinguished himself straight away. Before she'd ever met the candidates, Colonel Truman's forces had sent her their health and experience records, allowing her to make a first culling and just a few hours before had run those she had chosen to consider through a time trial, from which she then met only those who had qualified.

Scott had completed the course first, with a 3 second lead on the nearest competitor.

Cloistered safely in her little closet, K had watched on her CCTV as the 42 candidates walked tentatively through the slowly opening garage door. It was clear from the physicals that none would meet the astronomical requirements for Operator Series Black, there wasn't a Gem or a Gemma among the lot, so she was focusing on fielding the three Operators necessary to form the core Megazord. Operator Series Green could be selected at a later date, to supplement the core team once they were trained and functioning... and Black... well she wasn't certain they'd ever find someone to live up to the requirements for that.

"You are all about to meet the head of this project," Colonel Truman had intoned, leading them in, Scott at the front of the pack, "The final choice of team members lies at his sole discretion, so it would behoove you to address him with respect."

The assembled filed their way into the main room of the garage milling around, uncertain of which direction to go once they reached the apparent end of the line, not seeing anyone there. She sighed, and hovered her finger over the 'Enter' key, far more nervous than she should be to activate a display that didn't even show her face. With a swallow, she adjusted her microphone headset, let her finger fall, and addressed the assembled.

"Good Afternoon Candidates," she quavered, although the voice changer on her setup made even that sound commanding. Emboldened, she continued with her rehearsed speech, "You have been selected out of all interested Citizens of Corinth, based on your health records, and reported skill sets. In your performance on the long course, you have all passed the endurance and stress tests, and proven your anatomical flexibility, and motor reaction and adaptation capability. Your health records indicate you have no performance limiting mental conditions and possess the necessary visual acuity to operate vehicles without corrective lenses. Before we begin on the specific Operator qualifications, we will still need to test your three dimensional spacial orientation, anatomical stress resistance, panic control reflexes, horizon line recovery, and basic lung capacity, in order to ensure that you can withstand the force of high speed maneuvers in the Zord vehicles, not only without blacking out but without dropping below the acceptable operational threshold. Before we begin, are there any questions?"

"Doctor K, sir... if I may..."

"Yes?"

"Well... sir there's two Candidates here who shouldn't be. They didn't pass the time trial."

"It's interesting that you should bring up that point Candidate Meyers, considering you had a direct hand in making that happen."

"What?"

"It might interest you to know Candidate Meyers, that every single inch of the course you have all just run, is covered by my surveillance." K's letter disappeared from the central screen, being replaced by video of the wall climb about halfway through the course. "Here we see you mount the wall climb, directly behind you, we see Candidate Landsdown, and here, right here, we see you face downward, and kick her in the face. Seeing this, you then continue up the wall, without regard for the injury you have caused your fellow candidate. Now here, we see candidate McAllistair who had already reached the top of the wall, rappel back down to assist Candidate Landsdown. Total time lost to both in this escapade, subtracted from their finish times, places them squarely in the acceptable range."

"But-"

"Your conduct on the other hand, has disqualified you from moving on any further. Please exit the Garage."

"WHAT?" Meyers looked like he was going to try and argue the point, but Scott stepped in.

"The Doctor has asked you to leave," he stated firmly, stepping toe to toe with Meyers, who scowled, and turned his back, making his way back to the door through the crowd. Scott turned then, not to look back to her monitors, but to his father standing to the side of the group.

"I'll leave these people in your hands now Doctor," he announced, without meeting Scott's eyes, and turned to follow Meyers. She hadn't thought anything of it at the time, but in retrospect it was just another way in which the Colonel had a blind spot concerning his son.

"Remaining Candidates," she had then announced, "Please learn from Candidate Meyers' mistake. I am assembling a team. Any other candidate may someday be your teammate. Teammates do not sabotage one another, and I will not tolerate that behavior from any of you. You may make yourselves comfortable in this area, until your name is called by Specialist Vasquez. You will then proceed through the door to the right of these screens where your tests will be administered..."

It had taken nearly the rest of the day to sort through all of the candidates, even with 5 at a time in her Lab, each taking a different test. By the end of the day, there were only 12 remaining candidates, sent home overnight, to sleep and return the following day for the remainder of their testing.

"Good morning, Candidates," she greeted them once again assembled in the empty garage. "Yesterday, you each proved that you have the acute physical and mental skills necessary to be considered for inclusion on this team. Still awaiting you are a written exam, and a battery of tests customized to the specific positions you will be considered for based on your completion of the application survey. These," she called up pre-prepared graphic of the Biosuits, "Are the Covert Infantry Biosuits. They are designated by both color, and number. Operator #1, the Red Operator, must be capable of handling the vehicle designated as the Eagle Racer, as such Red Operator will be selected only from amongst those of you reporting previous experience with aircraft. Operator #2, the Blue Operator, in order to operate the Lion Hauler, must be experienced in Commercial Motor Vehicle operations. Operator 3 in charge of the Bear Crawler, requires only a Class D drivers license. As these requirements are clearly found in very different quantities amongst even this subset of the population we will be proceeding in numerical order with the tests. In the event you are eliminated from the running for Red Operator, you will still be a Candidate for Blue Operator, and likewise for Yellow Operator. Candidates Landsdown, Nelson, Truman and Warren, you are in consideration for the position of Operator Series Red please enter the Lab. The remainder of you are invited to make yourselves comfortable. I've had a cart of folding chairs delivered, which should be directly below these screens, and you will find juice, coffee, fruit and pastry in the kitchen, to your right, for breakfast."

She cut the feed to the Garage screens and opened the Lab doors to admit her first batch of candidates.

"If you would each please have a seat at the four terminals in the center of the room, and don the headsets, we will be running a flight simulation. The Eagle Racer, when airborne, handles similarly to a dual engine fighter jet, you will find your flight already in progress, and will experience several obstacles to a safe landing, which is your goal... good luck." K initialized the test, and the screens sprang to life. Though none were aware of it, all were in identical simulations. The first obstacle to their success was a swarm of Venjix drones, which they were required to maneuver around. Warren and Landsdown took serious damage, and Nelson was clipped, but Scott made it through unscathed. Next they all lost their engines, regardless of their damage levels, for it was part of the simulation. At that point Landsdown managed to crash her craft, throwing it into a dive instead of climbing to convert forward momentum into energy which could be used to glide. Warren crashed soon thereafter, on a portion which wasn't even an obstacle, failing to realize that the simulation was set inside the dome, and crashing into the shield. Scott and Candidate Nelson safely landed their craft, overcoming the final obstacle in the form of loss of instrument readings, as soon as they dropped below 2,500 feet.

"Candidate Landsdown," K intoned, as soon as the four had all doffed their headsets, "What _exactly_ , is your experience with aircraft?"

"My family, we... we had our own recreational planes."

"Single engine craft?"

"Yes."

"Candidate Landsdown, I regret to inform you that, tooling around in daddy's Cessna does not, alas, make you a combat pilot. If you could please rejoin the other candidates in the Garage. I'd like to get on with testing the _qualified_ pilots for the position of Operator Series Red." Summer had taken that dressing down with took it with such aplomb, that K almost felt bad about it. Where she had expected, from the history of the candidate, to find a spoiled brat, she instead found someone receptive to criticism and willing to adapt. She marked that down for future consideration.

"Candidate Wilson, your health forms state that you have 20/20 vision, uncorrected. Is that accurate?"

"Yes," he replied, tentatively.

"Then can you think of any reason why I shouldn't eliminate you here and now, for crashing directly into the dome shield?"

"No..." he didn't even need to be told to follow Summer out into the Garage.

"Candidates Nelson and Truman, I would like the two of you to begin on the written tests you will find on the terminals at the far end of the Lab, whilst I bring in the next set of candidates."

"But, what about the one of us you don't choose?" Nelson piped up nervously, "We'll have missed the test for Operator Series Blue..."

"Then I suppose you may wish to ensure you perform as best as you can on the tests, in order to be selected as the first Operator, so you do not have to worry about being considered for the second Operator." She rolled her eyes, hidden in her closet. It was fairly likely from her assessment that Nelson would in fact fail, as the test had a section about proactive decision making, and leadership, neither of which he seemed to possess. Activating the Garage screens again, she called for the six candidates available for Operator Series Blue, in groupings of three, putting them through a driving simulation for what would potentially be their Zord someday. In the end, only four candidates passed the simulation to her satisfaction.

"The remainder of you," she explained, to those not eliminated, "Will need to return to the Garage while I finish the selection of series Operator Red. Please do so through the door you came in, and do not converse with the eliminated candidates. I will call you back in in a moment."

"Now, Candidates Truman and Nelson. I would like you to each step into the two sets of space rings I have here. I will be asking you a series of questions while you are rotating, in order to determine your ability to make decisions in high stress distracting situations. This is the final test for this position."

Less than 30 seconds into the final test, there was almost no question in her mind of the decisions. Unbeknownst to her candidates, she'd had their written tests pulled up on her terminal, watching them take them in real time. Nelson was hesitant, frequently deleting his answers and starting over. Despite their technical correctness, his answers did not show leadership capabilities. Scott on the other hand entered each of his answers in nearly one shot, though he was clearly taking his time to think between questions, and his answers showed a dedication to protocol, a capacity for leadership and a dedication to service of the people.

What's more, he had already distinguished himself in the air at battle of Corinth, and again the Garage, with his handling of the Meyers situation, as a strong leader, with a strong sense of duty and honor.

"I have made my decision," K announced, cutting power to the Space rings, and leaving the two hanging. "Candidate Nelson..." she sighed "Will you please unstrap yourself and take a seat at one of the the simulation terminals. You will need to be tested for Operator Series Blue. Candidate Truman, please approach this bank of screens for special instructions."

She barely paid attention to Nelson's simulation, as she spoke with her new team leader. He crashed through two barriers in the first fourteen seconds, clearly not nearly as good at driving long road vehicles as commercial aircraft. She would have cut him off for the sake of time, were she not using the simulation headphones to prevent him from listening in on her conversation with Scott.

"Congratulations Candidate Truman. You have earned the right to the Designation of Operator Series Red, the leader of Corinth's first line of defense. I am merely the Mentor to this team, instructing you in the use of your weapons hardware, and the capacity of our enemy, but you will be the leader, and while I will advise on tactical decisions, all final orders will come from you. You will be as much responsible for the welfare and actions your fellow Operators as I am. Do you feel you can perform this role Candidate Truman?"

"Yes," he replied, nodding, and staring directly into her screen, in what she could only read as an attempt to make eye contact with her through them, although her cameras were located elsewhere. She believed he meant it.

"Then welcome to the team, Operator Series Red," she replied. "As team leader I will be looking for your input in the selection of the other two candidates. They must be individuals you feel you can live with, work with, and lead. As such, do not hesitate to ask them questions in the final segment of their selection, if for any reason you feel they will not follow you, that is terms for elimination." She cut the simulation to Candidate Nelson's terminal, "Candidate Nelson, you must have realized by now you are not nearly so proficient at this as you are at piloting airplanes. Please return to the Garage and join the other Candidates for Operator Series Yellow."

The young man tossed the headphones into the keyboard, and stormed out of the room, in frustration, as K activated the Garage screens, "Remaining Operator Series Blue Candidates, please return to the Lab."

"Candidates Fernandes, McAllistair, Duncan, and Smith, I am pleased to introduce you to Operator Series Red," she intoned, "He will be assisting me in the selection of his second in command."

"That would be one of us, right?" Smith asked tentatively, Fernandes leveled a sharp glare at him, before remembering she was being watched.

"Yes," K replied, with some frustration, "That would be one of you. Fernandes and Duncan please step on to the treadmills. McAllistair and Smith, please approach the terminals to your left, and put on the headphones."

In due time, the roles were reversed. Fernandes and Duncan approached the testing stations, while McAllistair and Smith mounted the treadmills. The first two had performed admirably, and seemed to have a rapport with one another, however she was only looking to assign one to the position, and Fernandes, who seemed to speak for both more often than not, was unfortunately lagging behind her counterpart in endurance. McAllistair had performed well on the exam, however Smith was already ruled out in her mind, unless Operator Series Red felt strongly otherwise.

"We will now ask you a series of questions as you run. Be aware that the treadmills are not in your control, and will proceed at their own pace until... Candidate Smith, are you injured?" she sighed, as Smith picked himself up off the floor, having managed to be thrown off the treadmill when it activated on it's lowest setting.

"No... no I'm fine," he replied, jumping up on the treadmill. Operator Series Red glanced over at her monitors again, causing K to smirk a little. It was clear he didn't want Smith any more than she did.

When the questions were concluded, the four were sent back out into the Garage, while the two conversed at the monitors once again.

"I think it's safe to say we can rule out Smith. Fernandes clearly knows her stuff, but I worry she won't keep up, and Duncan has the endurance, but it's hard to gauge his knowledge with Fernandes answering first all the time..."

"Indeed. Would you like me to bring him in to run along side Candidate McAllistair?"

"Do we have any information on their backgrounds?"

"Duncan is a carpenter, plumber and handyman, he learned his craft at a two year vocational school and has been a solid workman since then. McAllistair... is currently a mechanic, having previously been terminated from positions in the Police Force and Fire Services for protocol violations, and being ejected from a volunteer position in what was ostensibly a foreign aide job for interfering with local politics to the detriment of the sponsoring companies financial situation."

"How did he pass the background check with that on his record?"

"See for yourself," she replied, pulling up his document on one of the smaller screens.

"So what you're saying is, we should pick this guy because he's physically incapable of standing down in the face of injustice."

"I would say no such thing. I would say that job history indicates Candidate McAllistair to be is selfless to a fault."

"To a fault? "

"Frankly, he appears to be attempting to live out some self aggrandizing hero fantasy, at the expense of all reason. It was admirable when he returned to a burning building after children, understandable when he returned for the kittens, but simply _stupid_ when he returned for the plants. An asset willing to sacrifice themselves for comparatively trivial gain is a liability."

"There's nothing self aggrandizing about it. He nearly sacrificed his chance to be on this team, stopping to help Landsdown after Meyers kicked her in the teeth. Let's go with McAllistair, but I'd really like to see Fernandes back for Operator Yellow."

"Very well," she conceded, "Although I remind you we'll be seeing them _all_ back for Operator Series Yellow... including Candidate Nelson," she stated, flicking the switch to activate the Garage monitors. "Candidates McAllistair, Duncan, Smith, and Fernandes... and Candidate... Wilson. Please enter the testing Lab."

"Congratulations Candidate McAllistair. You have been selected for the position of Operator Series Blue, please acquaint yourself with your commanding officer. The remainder of you will please seat yourselves around the... where is Candidate Wilson?"

"He left an hour ago," Fernandes spoke up, "He only stuck around for a few minutes after he didn't get Red... Lapinski's gone too."

"Well good riddance to them," K replied, "Now we have two even groups of four... just a moment." She flicked on the screens in the Garage and called Nelson to join the three already in her Lab. Once he was with them she continued. "You should be familiar with the simulators by now, please be seated and begin the simulation testing for Operator Series Yellow."

The remaining eight candidates were tested on the simulators, narrowing the field down to four once again, this time with the deliberation of both of her assigned Operators, while the candidates waited in the Garage.

"Fernandes, Landsdown, Nelson, and Zwyck... please re-enter the Lab. The remainder of you are free to go. Colonel Truman has asked me to convey, however, that he would be pleased to receive applications from any of you who are interested in joining the City's Defense Infantry."

Again two were assigned the written tests, and two were taken to the question and answer under physical duress. To test the agility of mind and body required for the third Operator, the Q&A candidates were placed on the firing end of a pair of ball cannons, manned by the current operators, and instructed to dodge the incoming fire while answering the questions put to them. The pairs traded tasks, and then returned to the Garage.

"I think it's safe to say we can rule out Nelson..." Operator Series Red stated, as soon as they were out the door.

"I felt kind of badly for the poor lad. You didn't need to pelt him so much." The Blue Operator observed.

"We can't have someone on this team who freezes up when they're taking fire."

"Agreed," K replied, "and Zwyck performed quite poorly on the written compared to the other three."

"Which leaves us with Fernandes and Landsdown. It'll be good to have a lass on the team... ya know... for PR reasons."

"Landsdown shows the most promise I think... of the two," Scott stated, simply.

"Fernandes has demonstrated solid work ethic, high agility, and as a former long haul trucker has a background more conducive to the grueling conditions this team will be forced to live in," K advised.

"What was Landsdown's occupation again?" Flynn asked.

"Records indicate she was in her 6th year as a University Student," she replied. "Frequent change of majors prevented her acquiring the necessary credits to graduate. She lacks focus and the ability to dedicate herself to completing a task. This sudden desire to be a hero is likely just another passing fancy. I don't believe this candidate has the necessary work ethic to withstand the conditions under which this team will be operating. "

"No. She has what it takes," Scott replied, with the certainty of command, "I've seen it. If it wasn't for her I would never have made it inside the dome. My vote is for Landsdown."

"Mine as well... if I get one," Operator Series Blue, concurred. "If she was gonna give up so easily, Meyers gave her every reason yesterday."

"Very well," K acquiesced, clicking over to the Garage speakers.

"Candidate Landsdown. Congratulations. You have been selected to serve as Series Operator Yellow. Please return to the Lab. To the remainder, I will remind you that Colonel Truman welcomes your applications to the City Defense Force proper. You are free to go."

In the end, she had only one of the three she would have chosen had she been the sole selector of the team, and that was Scott. Though she had been unable to see past their surface failings, he had trusted Flynn and Summer to live up to the potential he saw in them, and in the end he had been right. If it now looked as if Scott's desire to be a hero was nothing more than a child seeking parental approval, then she would have to try and look past that, as he had done for Summer and Flynn.

K wasn't sure how the remainder of her team busied themselves then, as she spent the hours only half productively working on an enhancement for the fuel systems, all the while watching the tiny icons on her scanners representing Scott and Gem, confidant that as long as they were still moving around on the screen, the two were still capable of returning of their own volition, but concerned about the Venjix tech readings in the vicinity. She didn't fail to notice when they began to move a great deal faster, vectoring on the city, and glanced to her communication speakers, holding her breath awaiting the self identification transmission which was standard on return to the city.

"Doc, get the gates open, we're commin' in."

K exhaled, allowing a small smile to creep across her face, as she flipped her communication array to broadcast directly to the Command Tower.

"Open Sector Six Entry Gates for an Arrival."


	7. U is for Ubiquitous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> U is for Ubiquitous: Parents are the single greatest influence in their children's lives...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place just after "Heroes Among Us."

While her Rangers were off enjoying themselves in a well deserved break after the day's battle, playing pool or some such in the main area of the Garage, K flicked off her computer screens, and stretched from her seat before she wandering across to the lab bathroom, where she secured the door behind her. Bending over, she rooted through the contents of the cabinet underneath, surfacing some time later with a bottle of shampoo, a small washrag, and a single bladed shaving razor... musing over the events of the day as she ran the sink water to heat it.

She only had her sweater off when there came a knocking at the door.

"Occupied," she replied, somewhat irritably, "For at least a half an hour."

"Half an hour? Are you alright?" came Summer's voice from the other side.

"I'm fine," K replied, as if the question were quite stupid indeed, already working on the buttons to her shirt. "I'm bathing if you must know."

"But there's no shower in there..."

"There's a perfectly good sink," she replied,

"Wait... seriously?"

"Yes seriously!" K began re-buttoning her shirt, exasperatedly.

"You do know there's two shower tubs upstairs, right?"

"I approved the blueprints for the whole base," K replied opening the door, "I know what's upstairs."

"And you didn't put a shower in your bathroom?"

"It's an unnecessary luxury," she sputtered, "and besides, it would have tipped you off I was living in the Lab."

"Come on," Summer reached in and grabbed the shampoo off the sink ledge. "You're not washing in the sink anymore."

"Excuse me?" The doctor was taken aback at the commanding tone Ranger Yellow took as she reached in again, stealing K's washrag and razor as well.

"No. More. Sink-baths," she gestured as if to usher K out of the bathroom. "You're using mine and Gemma's bathroom upstairs."

Sighing deeply K, stepped out of the bathroom, and making a fair show of reluctance, followed Summer out through the Garage. She couldn't help but notice, as she passed, that the Ranger's weren't playing pool anymore. Ziggy and Flynn were watching television, Dillon was under his car, and Scott was nowhere to be seen.

"I still don't get it," she heard Gem asking Gemma as they sat in the kitchen, snacking, "Why did he give back the medal? I though that's what he wanted..."

"He didn't want the medal," Summer explained, breezing through, "He just wanted his father's approval. No, you're still coming with me," she caught K as she tried to take her shampoo back and escape back to the Lab.

Glaring a little, K followed Summer up the stairs, noting to herself the strange, out-of-place-ness she felt in the upstairs, having never actualy left the ground floor of her base before. Summer stopped and opened the door to the bathroom apparently shared by her and Gemma. K had intended when she deigned the place for the bathrooms to be shared equaly, but apparently the archaic social convention of mens and womens bathrooms had won out, leaving the five male rangers to share one bathroom, while the two girls laid claim to the other.

Summer ushered K into the bathroom... this one tiled and white, unlike the cement floored and cinderblock walled bathroom down in the lab, and before K could protest Summer had darted around her and was already running a bath in the tub, pouring some strange sweet smelling purple liquid into the water, which caused the water to foam under the tap.

"This shampoo is terrible," she noted, smelling the contents of the bottle, "Use mine," she pulled a bottle down from the caddy hanging from the shower head and placing it on the edge of the tub "And here's some body wash... it's no good washing your whole self in hand soap all the time... and some shaving cream... have you been shaving with soap?" She scowled a bit at the brown military issue washrag, glancing at her own loofah, hanging from a hook below the caddy, and then to Gemma's soft white washrag hanging off the soap dish, and in the end conceded there was nothing to be done about that, at least for now. She handed over the washrag, stepping around K as she did.

"I don't want to see you out of here for at least an hour," Summer commanded, with a smile. "Have a nice bath, and relax for once," she added as she dissapeared through the door with K's shampoo. It was then that the Doctor began to realize how Ranger Yellow had been keeping Ranger Black in check all this time. It was quite possible to be shanghaied by Summer before one even had the chance to protest.

Alone again K sighed, and hung her sweater on the back of the door, resuming her undress while observing the foreign bathroom. Neither the bathroom in her lab, nor the ones in Alphabet Soup, had ever had visible tanks, or lids on the seats of the toilet. When the rest of her clothing had joined the sweater on the hooks on the back of the door, she turned off the water, and after a moment of hesitation, stepped gingerly into the hot bath, settling into it with some discomfort. She hadn't wanted to tell Summer, but the truth of the matter was, they had never had a shower in the Soup, and she'd outgrown the tiny tin, hose filled washtub available to them when she was only eight.

While the Alphabet Soup contact protocols, to which she had been conditioned early on to comply, had severely limited the manner in which assets and handlers were allowed to physically interact, it had allowed, for younger assets, assistance with personal care. Before she had turned six, Ma'am had always drawn her a lukewarm bath in the tiny tin tub, helped her to bathe, and to dress, and to care for her hair. When she was six and seven she had only drawn the bath, and helped with washing and combing her hair, leaving K to do her own washing and dressing, but from her 8th birthday, K had been almost solely responsible for her own personal care, and had never bothered with the tub, finding it faster to wash directly out of the sink. She was more than slightly accustomed then, to her method of bathing and did not anticipate enjoying the sensation of immersion in liquid.

It was, however, not as objectionable as she had presumed it would be, though she found the temperature somewhat stifling. In fact the longer she sat there, upright with her arms around her knees, as it didn't occur to her to recline, the more she felt she could almost remember sitting in a tub like this some very long time ago... but every time she tried to grasp at the memory, to reach out toward the feeling of gentle hands running through her hair... the memory changed in her minds eye. The warm water, warm air, white tub and gentle hands were traded for rapidly cooling water, the chill of cold air on damp skin, the tin washtub and Ma'ams sharp fingernails scratching across her scalp. Bathing with Ma'am had never been a relaxing experiance, but even so, she had secretly resented the diminished contact as she got older... longing, despite protocol, for a closer relationship with her handlers.

In due time, K gave up trying to remember when she'd last had a warm bath, and finally reclining in order to wet her hair, turned her thoughts back to what she'd heard walking through the Garage. Scott's father had come to award him a medal... and he had returned it. Although this confused Gem, it made perfect sence, on consideration, to K, unlike Summer's insistence on this bath, she thought as she began to shampoo her hair with Summer's strangely sweet smelling shampoo.

The desire for a closer relationship with your parents was something she felt she could relate to. Lacking parents for as long as she could remember, of course, it was the approval and affection of her handlers she sought out, seemingly to about as much success as Scott was having with his father of late... which was none at all.

Outside of personal maintenance assistance allowed when she was small, there was very little physical contact allowed between assets and their handlers. The greatest expression of positive physical contact allowed between them was a hand on the shoulder, and the greatest quantity of negative physical contact allowed was a double handed arm restraint, usually performed on an asset by both handlers, each seizing a limb, to force a reluctant asset to walk where required. Hand to hand contact was permitted in most forms, especially with younger assets who may have needed to be, quite literally, led by the hand, but they were also permitted a slap on the hand as a form of discipline, a handshake to seal an agreement or as congratulations for a job well done, or the hand to hand contact necessary in handing over objects, but so much as a simple hug or a pat on the head was clearly forbidden.

Baring that, there was only verbal assurances to look forward to. Before she'd discovered their lies, the mere desire to hear Sir or Ma'am say "We're proud of you," was enough to cause K to ignore all else to keep her projects on time line, and within budget. She often stayed up long past when she should have been asleep, worked through meals, and sacrificed her 'recreation' time to make deadlines. Once when she was eight, she'd been so determined to make her deadline that she'd hidden from her handlers that she hadn't been able to hold down food for several days, afraid they'd force her to take a break.

Of course it hadn't worked out as she meant it to, as she'd been forced to stop in the end anyway. Thinking back on it she had only a vague memory of getting a dressing down for low productivity, words like, 'disappointed' and 'ungrateful' being thrown about, because the project was falling behind on the timeline. She was too tired to cry, too tired to process most of what they were saying, the room was spinning and then there was a sharp pain in her side and she was intimately familiar with the cement floor.

"Oh my God," Ma'am rushed forward.

"What are you playing at K? Get back in your chair, honey."

"K?" a gentle hand on her face, "Oh God, she's burning up."

"Contact protocol!" The hand was withdrawn quickly, leaving her alone again, in pain on the floor. "You can't coddle her, she's an asset: a thing, like a computer," Sir's harsh whisper to Ma'am was unlike anything she'd ever heard before. It was the first time she had reason to doubt that they cared about her, but it would not be the last.

"When your computer fan breaks, you don't just keep using it. If you do it overheats, and you've got a melted brick that you may as well use it as a doorstop." K felt herself lifted up, cradled in Ma'am's arms. "Do you have any concept of what an unchecked fever can do to a child's brain? Get the cot."

"But-"

"Get. The. Cot. Or we're both gonna catch hell when she gets brain damage or goes blind." The sound of retreating feet, "You hang in there K. Don't you go south on us here. Hey... buck up sweetheart... you pull through this and we'll get you some new sheet music for your violin... you'd like that right? Come on, stay with me here."

She had managed a murmured affirmative, fighting conflicting instincts to avoid interpersonal contact, and to seek comfort from the suddenly maternal Ma'am, despite the Contact Protocol conditioning. There was something about Ma'am's touch which reached some empty little pocket of K's soul which had once been reserved for a figure called "Mommy." It was that part of her which was fighting against her conditioning then, wanting to cling to the front of Ma'am's shirt and bury her face in her neck, and sleep there forever, but before she could resolve the inner conflict, the cot had arrived and the opportunity passed as she was laid down upon it, and Ma'am stepped away from her side.

It was been nearly a week before she was able to work again, laying alone for hours on the cot in nothing but her shirt, underwear, socks and a thin blanket which was alternately too hot, and not warm enough. A doctor she'd never met before or since periodically took her temperature, and asked her to drink from a cup of disgusting liquid she immediately threw up the first few times.

Once or twice she asked after Sir and Ma'am, wanting disparately to have company in her infirmity, but the doctor always said they wouldn't be coming back until she was well again, and she should know that. It was standard practice to quarantine sick assets, and even handlers, to prevent their spreading disease within the Soup. Only the nurses and, in extreme cases, the doctor visited the sick.

Only when she was finally cleared to work again, dressed back in her full uniform, and the cot and blanket taken away, did Sir and Ma'am return to her.

"K sweetheart, I need you to listen to me ok?" Ma'am had said, crouching down to K's level, on one knee, "This can not happen again. It's very important that we get this work done, and it's worse for the timetables if this happens than if you tell us right away when you're feeling suboptimal."

"Yes Ma'am..." K demurred, knowing full well that they were going easy on her because of her recent illness. If she had done anything else to delay a project like this, they would have been very cross indeed with her.

"Now," Ma'am stood, and backed up next to Sir, "I believe I promised you some sheet music, if you got well again. Have you considered which composer you'd like to work on next?"

"No Ma'am... it was my fault." K had replied, knowing somehow that in denying what she wanted... in punishing herself where they would normally have done so, she would earn their approval. "I should have told you when I was feeling ill. I don't deserve any new music."

"That's very responsible of you," Sir intoned, "We're proud of you K."

And that was better than any sheet music ever could be.

Sometimes, she knew the best way to win the approval of others, was to deprive yourself of that which you want. To give back the medal then, was the only natural reply for Scott, considering the only reason Truman would have given him a medal for going off directive, was if he were going easy on his son... trying to give him what he thought he wanted.

While she thought these things over, K had completed her grooming routine, which was more extensive than one would think of a person with such a low emphasis on appearance used to bathing out of the sink, however Alphabet Soup had strict personal grooming regulations which even now she never questioned. The scrubbing of fingernails and removal of visible androgenic hair, were, to her, simply the things that are done, along with keeping the hair at or above the collar and wearing freshly ironed work shirts. Though fairly certain that her hour was not yet up, K stood from the tub, seeing no reason to comply with Summers insistence that she remain in the tub for any specific length of time, and glanced around the bathroom, realizing as she hadn't on her way in, what was very wrong with this picture.

Hanging on the towel bars were a bright yellow towel, and a white towel with silver trim, both clearly used and re-folded at some point in the past, and no other.

"Touche," she muttered, picking up the bathmat and using it to cover herself as she opened the door and called out into the hall.

"Operator Series Yellow!" she called, "If I am forced to remain in this bathroom much longer... I may decide to experiment with chemical properties of the many lovely personal care products stored in here!"


	8. A is for Acquiescence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A is for Acquiescence: At some point you have to acknowledge that others might know what they're talking about, no matter how much it scares you...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during "Not so Simple."

On some level, despite the fact that he had in fact completely ruined the internals of the Zords beyond what auto-repair was capable of dealing with without additional re-programming and at least a ton and a half of raw materials not particularly easy to come by when living in the dome, K was relieved that Flynn's gadget had failed spectacularly. Yes, in the end it would mean a great deal more work for her, and they would be tactically vulnerable for a time while she performed that work, but Flynn had, for some time, posed a threat to her perceived intellectual superiority, particularly after he'd managed to solve the ongoing problems she'd been having with his suit with a simple flip of the engine cell. His failure then, left her secure in her position as the only individual in Corinth who could create weapons tech equaling or bettering Venjix tech... with the exception of course of Gem and Gemma, who she had taught herself, and who were so very conditioned by Alphabet Soup that she didn't suppose they would ever so much as attempt to unseat her.

Somewhere along the line, being the smartest... being the only one who could do what she could do, had become an essential and critical portion of K's identity... no... a critical survival skill in her arsenal.

If she were not the only one capable of what she were doing then she had no right to be here, in the lab, and not in a cell rotting while someone equally competent and less culpable did the work. Those whose projects failed as spectacularly as project Venjix had, didn't deserve funding or control over future projects... unless of course they were as spectacularly non-expendable as K had come to be.

As she stared at her screen, watching the auto-repair spool up with the new programming, K thought back on the day she'd first encountered what happened to those Doctors in the Soup who became expendable... or obsolete.

It was some time after Gem and Gemma had come to work with her, and she was getting ready to start work on the Eagle racer... but of course in order to create a Zord designed around _Aquila chrysaetos_ , the Golden Eagle, then she was going to need a complete sequencing of its genes.

"We could get this done a lot faster if we sourced the sequencing to Doctor P. He did a fantastic job with _Ursus americanus cinnamomum_."

"I'm sorry sweetheart, but there is no Doctor P anymore."

"What? Why?"

"Doctor P's final project lost its funding last week. He has lost the right to the Doctor Designation."

"He lost his Designation? What happens to us if-"

"Don't you worry yourself about that..."

"But... he's allergic to the-"

"Don't worry, K, we wouldn't turn any of you out on the streets. That asset has been re-designated Operator 637, and transferred to the Data Farm."

"The Data Farm? He's babysitting the servers? Trained chimpanzees could do that work!" she balked.

"That's what happens to assets who don't perform K," Sir explained. "We don't have the funds to continue supporting the projects of substandard assets."

"But that won't happen to you K," Ma'am added quickly, "You're still our top performing asset, and we're sure your projects will continue to succeed."

From then on, K recalled as she shut down her screens and wandered off to her closet to sleep, she had always kept tight tabs on which projects were getting green-lighted, and where the funding was going. Staying ahead of the curve and on top of the ranks was the only way to avoid the demeaning possibility of becoming obsolete. She stopped sourcing anything at all to the other Doctors, insistent that she could do everything, and she could... but it was more than reasonably important for her to show that to Sir and Ma'am. Over night, the faceless nameless other Doctors, each with their own letter designation, became rivals instead of collaborators

Gem and Gemma, on the other hand, had never posed a threat to her in the way the other Doctors did. Their continued usefulness was reliant on the continuation of Project Ranger. Her successes ensured their continued usefulness as testing subjects, and so they were safe resources to tap, and continued to be so designated in her mind, even in Corinth, where if she really thought about it, there was nothing at all to stop Colonel Truman from putting them in charge. Comparative to the average citizen of Corinth even Gem and Gemma were hyper-intelligent... then again, they were hyper-everything they did. Still... they'd never take the appointment. It would take them away from their passion: blowing things up.

But Flynn? It was more than apparent that he had not only the capability but the desire to create and maintain exactly the sort of technology this city needed in order to combat Venjix. There remained the very real possibility that if he were to gain the competence to take over her job, he would be not only willing but eager to do so... and once obsolete, she would have no excuse not to turn herself in to the Corinth Defense Force as the war criminal she was.

Though she had long ago resigned herself to living out the rest of her life in captivity, in the dark dank cells of Corinth's underground prison system, K could not sit idle in a cell while Venjix destroyed humanity.

She drifted off to a fitful sleep some time after 1am, waking periodically, imagining an alarm from her closet terminal, sometimes a Venjix attack alarm, sometimes an auto-repair error, at least once she was certain she heard the lab incursion alarm, but when she finally roused from bed and checked, there was no one there.

There was no mistaking the error alarm which woke her at quarter past 7 in the morning however. Bleary eyed, she rolled out of her cot, and into her chair, as the screen slowly came into focus. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and called up the details of the error. The ruptures to the Bio Energy Channels had been successfully repaired, but there were obstructions that could not be cleared by the auto-repair at its current capabilities. K emitted a frustrated groan, and hurriedly changed into her uniform, shoving the cot into the corner without bothering to fold it, and throwing her pajamas nearby in a crumpled mess, her military neatness overcome by her urgency to get the Zords back in working order.

That urgency didn't help her in the end. When next Attack Bot made it's presence known, at quarter to 11 in the morning, she was still working on the fabrication of the nano-bots she was designing to flush the channels, and there was no way that the lab equipment could make enough of them fast enough to get the Zords back online before they were needed.

"Venix Attack Bot: City Square," K informed the Rangers, as they assembled behind her.

"Look at these energy readings! These ones are off the charts!" Summer made a grand statement of the obvious, as the Hammer-bot again made its presence felt.

"And our Megazord Power Cells?" Dillon inquired, stoically.

"Still inoperable. I'm sorry Rangers, I've got no choice but to send you completely unarmed," K lamented, finally turning from her consoles. Of course in the most literal interpretation, the Bio-suits and their associated weapons did not really qualify as being unarmed, but the moment the Hammer-bot enlarged itself, as was inevitable, what she had given them would be as useless as peashooters against armored tanks.

"Come on guys, lets get to work," Scott lead his team out of the Garage.

"You go ahead. Hurry!" K didn't fail to notice the anomaly. Gemma sending Gem off without her?

"Doctor, I've been developing a weapon," Flynn began, "it's-"

"The Road Attack Zord," Gemma interrupted, "I helped him upload it into your system last night."

So there had been an incursion into her lab.

"You two accessed my bio energy configurations without permission!"

"We could downmorph it, and use it to fend off the Attack Bot!"

"Negative! Unleashing this unproven untested entity is likely to backfire and destroy us all," and she would know about unleashing untested entities. "Now get out there! We're wasting time!" K turned back to her consoles, immersed again in her work, determined to get the Zords online before Venjix succeeded in wiping out the entire population of Corinth. If only there were some way to make the nano-bots multiply faster... or an alternative way to clear the channels.

The only immediately effective solution would be to burn them clear with a level of power she just didn't have at her disposal. She began to entertain the possibility of asking the Colonel to shut down the shield. It would only take a few seconds of the power running through those shields diverted into the Zords Bio Energy Channels to clear them, but the city would be vulnerable in the mean time, and even once she was done it would take them longer to re-energize from a full shut down than from just lowering them regularly. It wasn't a risk she wanted to take if she could get the Zords online any other way.

"Doctor K, I'll dispatch my men to the Rangers' location," the Colonel came through over the Vis-com, responding to the negative chatter over the Suit-coms.

"Negative Colonel," Scott replied, before K had a chance, "There's no time!" He was right. She would have to ask him to shut down the shields. It was the only way.

"Doctor downmorph the wheel! It'll work. If anyone knows their way around a tire it's me," Flynn's voice echoed through the lab. K stared forward at her monitor, assessing the situation. "Oh for pity's sake woman, would you just trust me for once?"

"Please! Doctor we need something!"

Take down the shield to repair the proven Zords, or dispatch Flynn's new invention and hope for the best. If it worked they could avoid leaving the city vulnerable at least for the time being, and it would buy her time to find another way to clear the Bio-Energy channels... and if it didn't? Could it really be worse than a swarm of drones descending on the city with the shields down?

"Stand by for Road Attack Zord Down-morph," she conceded.

She sent the Zord to their location, and watched with some apprehension on her monitors as it quickly decimated the Hammer-bot... and then, turned on the Rangers.

"It's coming straight for us!" Summer was in fine form with her statement of the obvious that day.

"I'll hold it back!" Gem's assertion was followed by agonizing screams, as K watched the energy readings in his suit rapidly deplete, and his bio signs waver under the intense onslaught.

"It's got too much power!"

"Take evasive action! It's completely uncontrollable!" K informed the Rangers, even as she was making efforts to rein the rogue robot in. It wouldn't accept any of her coding however... the programming was completely different to her own. "Ranger Gold! It's coming back!" She warned, as the Zord rounded on the Rangers once more, targeting Gem. However rudimentary it's AI was, the Zord clearly thought of him as a threat after his first attempt to stop it. The Suit-coms were inundated with frantic cries, and the overwhelmingly loud sound of the Road Attack Zord's wheel grinding into the pavement where they held it, she flicked a switch, cutting the feed from the Suit-coms to the Lab speakers, in order to better concentrate on her attempts to gain control over the Zord before their Bio-Suits ran out of energy.

"Guys! I'm sorry. I don't know what happened!" Flynn's voice echoed alone through the lab, the handheld Morpher-coms being on a different feed than those inside the suit helmets.

"Well you had better figure it out Flynn," K muttered, her reply only audible to Flynn, with her feed to the helmets cut off. "Because I still haven't been able to clear these blockages in the Bio Energy Channels from your LAST, great idea."

"Alright listen, I installed a built in shut off. Just give it a good whack, right in the middle."

K barely registered the conversation as her fingers flew across both keyboards, trying to find some way in to the foreign programming... something perhaps Gemma had written which would be more familiar and allow her a way into the controls.

"It worked! Road Attack Zord is offline!" Summer came in over her Morpher-com.

K sighed, partially in relief, and partially in exasperation, and sat back for a moment in her chair, re-establishing her connection to the Suit-coms before she returned her focus to the repair work on the Zords.

"Doctor K, you need to listen to me very carefully-" Flynn's voice interrupted her some few minutes later.

"Not now Ranger Blue!" she replied irritably, "If I don't get these Bio Energy Channels cleared before that bot enlarges, we are all going to be destroyed!"

"That's what I'm trying to help you with!"

"I don't need any more of YOUR help!" she insisted, angrily.

"Doctor K!" Gemma's voice came over the coms, "Please! Listen to him! It's a good idea!"

"Be quick about it!" K replied, not ceasing in her own work, as the energy readings spiked on her console, indicating Attack Bot growth. "We have negative time!"

"With enough energy, you can burn the blockages out of the Bio-Energy channels!"

"I KNOW that!" she replied, fingers flying across he keyboard, "But the only way we're going to GET that energy is to bring down the dome shield, and leave the city vulnerable to an attack by Venjix swarm drones!"

"That's where you're wrong!"

"What?" she snapped. Wrong? Considering the blow to her competence he'd already committed with his indecipherable Zord Programming, and the panicked state she was in with her Rangers defenseless against the enlarged Hammer-bot, the statement, meant to be benign, came off as a supreme injury.

"The Road Attack Zord generates too much energy. If we can siphon that off-"

"I can run it through the other Zords, and burn the Bio-Energy channels clear," K interrupted, in an unconscious effort to make it clear he hadn't thought of anything she couldn't, as she switched tasks fluidly, already shutting down her nanobot program, and activating the Road Attack Zord again, this time in the Zord bay under controlled conditions, where the power was used to clear the Bio-Energy Channels of the other Zords, under the guidance of the auto-repair sequence she'd been working on just in case she had to divert shield power to burn the channels clear.

"Flynn, Gemma, I'm downmorphing your Zords to you," she commed over their individual channels, and finally with a sigh of relief sunk back into her chair, watching the outputs. _I did it,_ she thought, contentedly secure once again in her competence. But then, as the panic began to fade, she actually registered her conversation with Flynn... she _hadn't_ done it. Flynn had done it and she'd poached his development without a second thought, in the heat of the moment. To take credit for the work of another, even for a moment in her own mind... didn't sit well with K.

"Somebody call for a mechanic?"

"Flynn!" the Green Ranger took over for Summer's duties, stating the obvious once more.

"And Gemma!" Flynn replied, as she came into the airspace above him, "We're clear to go Megazord!"

"Whoa! How did you do that?" Gem asked, clearly speaking to K.

"I diverted the wheel's excess energy," she paused, "It was Flynn's idea."

As much as she would prefer not to admit his competence, but instead go on secure in her irreplaceablity, she had to give credit where credit was due.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I is for Intertwined: Romantic relationships are never simple. Relationships with people in other relationships, romantic or not, are even more complicated... especially where Gemma and Flynn are concerned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after "Not So Simple."

"And... well that's why I just think you should be nicer to Flynn."

"I'm fairly certain that Ranger Blue and I have already worked out our disagreement over the incident with the enhanced Power Cell, Gemma," K replied as she wandered through the Zord bay, clipboard in hand, taking an inventory of what was left of their raw materials after the repairs were completed on the Zords after their most recent activation. "Need more carbon," she muttered standing on the catwalk over a huge blackened bin, containing only a few remaining lumps of dark dry graphite, and scribbling down the note on her clipboard.

"He's really smart!"

"Yes... I realize that, Gemma," K sighed, plodding along regardless of the interference, peering into each bin in turn, as she noted the quantities within each. "Sufficient quantities of Iron... Aluminum... Tin..."

"His inventions are amazing! Have you even seen his car washer?" Gemma trailed after K as she descended the stairs at the far end of the catwalk. "What about the auto jack?" K began to tune out the Silver Ranger, as she walked along the sides of the larger bins, examining the contents of smaller receptacles between them. "And I hardly had to re-program the Road Attack Zord for it to work with your systems at all!"

"Sufficient tantalum, tungsten..." It was becoming more than slightly clear that Gemma's motivations for having this conversation were not quite what she thought they were. Certainly K had been more than slightly harsh with Ranger Blue the day before, but that was resolved as far as she was concerned, and, she was fairly certain, as far as Flynn was concerned as well. Only Gemma was still hanging on to the perceived slight. She had to wonder if her long time friend even knew what it was she was feeling. Despite their more extroverted behavior, the twins had always had a rather stunted comprehension of the complexities of human emotion.

K, on the other hand, had read enough psychology in her time to understand a great deal more about the human condition than she was capable of applying to her own interactions with others, considering her isolationist social tendencies. The very basics of human pair bonding tendencies, however, made it as clear to her as Summer's infatuation with Ranger Black; Gemma was falling for Flynn.

Gem was not going to take that well.

"Flynn is absolutely the smartest person I've ever MET outside the Soup!" Gemma enthused.

"We need more niobium..." K replied. While getting Summer to admit her attachment to Dillion could only serve to strengthen the team, encouraging any sort of romantic relationship for either of the twins would, in K's opinion, pose only a detriment.

Ever since she'd known the two, they had always functioned as a unit. Their conditioning in the Complex had only strengthened the pre-existing bond of their twinship. They had no concept of personal space, privacy, or identity where the other was concerned. They used to drive Sir and Ma'am to distraction with their flagrant violations of contact protocol. It wasn't just that they went beyond the permitted handshakes and shoulder pats, frequently leaning on one another, and engaging in hugs and piggyback rides, but that they were repeatedly caught in the act of changing clothing in one another's presence, brushing one another's hair, and sleeping in the same cot, or two pushed together.

But whatever their adult handlers might have feared in the way of impropriety between assets of opposite gender, they were wrong. The Westermarck effect was in full effect between the twins. No... their innocent improprieties were simply the result of their inability to recognize one another as anything other than an extension of self.

K's ruminations were interrupted by sonorous footfall on the catwalk. With Gemma standing next to her, she could normally presume that the new entrant was Gem, as most often it was the twins who came down to check up on their equipment, having maintained their Zords on their own out in the waste. The other Rangers seldom descended into the sub basements of the Garage, trusting their Zord's maintenance to K, but considering recent events she wouldn't have been surprised to see Flynn down to check up on the Road Attack Zord. K stepped back from the raw materials, in order to get a view of who was above.

"Doctor K?" Gem's voice echoed down from the catwalk, as soon as she came into his line of sight. "Have you seen Gemma?"

"Down here!" Gemma replied, before K could answer, stepping out from under the catwalk to wave up at her brother.

"Oh! There you are!" he smiled, bounding to the opposite end of the catwalk, and down the stairs at the far end.

"I was only saying," Gemma turned back to K, "I mean wouldn't it be great if he could help us with the Zords as well?"

"What?" Gem screwed up his face into an exaggerated look of confusion. "Who?"

"Flynn!" Gemma replied, beaming.

"Flynn," he repeated, frustratedly. "Is that all you can talk about today?"

It clearly perturbed him that Gemma was obsessing over a subject which held little interest to him. After all, the twins had always been of one mind... but in their time among the Ranger team, their had been a slow, steady assertion of individual identities, most notably from Gemma, although that was perhaps because if either could be said to be the leader it would be Gem, and Gemma was no longer following. She was striking out on her own now and then, and while K was by no means interested in stunting Gemma's individual growth, she was none the less concerned about the effect this eventuality could have on the functioning of the twins in combat.

K sighed and wandered down to the next small set of bins, nestled between the Carbon and Iron bins, and tried to ignore the sibling squabble. It was better if the two of them somehow managed to work out this situation without any outside involvement, especially not hers. That would only remind them of the similar squabble the two had some four years ago, back in the Soup when Gem had started paying a little too much attention to K, and not enough to Gemma. That fight had ended with the two refusing to speak to one another for over two weeks, which had set the Project back seriously. That was not a state they could be allowed to fall into again. As annoying as it had been in the lab, two team members who refused to speak to one another could be deadly in combat, and not just to each other.

Of course K was under no delusion that Gem's fleeting attraction to her, which had dissipated under her continued discouragement, was the result of anything other than his being a teenage boy isolated in a bunker with a mother figure, a sister, and herself. This situation was somewhat different to that. Exposed to the whole of Corinth City, there was no such excuse for Gemma. She clearly had a genuine affection for Flynn, which he seemed to reciprocate.

"But Flynn is... he's special Gem! He invented a Zord yesterday, if you hadn't noticed!"

"You mean you invented a Zord _with_ him. You said you were coming to bed!"

She was about to insist that the two take their squabbling elsewhere when the sound of footfall on the catwalk rang out again through the bay. This time there was no question who was there. He stopped after only a few steps, clearly surprised to have walked in on the loud sibling argument... particularly one about himself. He stared down at the twins. K glanced up at him, and over to the twins, both now staring up at Flynn... Gemma looking more than slightly embarrassed, and Gem, more than slightly hostile.

"I... sorry... I'll... I'll come back later..." he grimaced, and turned back the way he'd come.

"GEM!" Gemma whine-shouted, the moment the Zord bay door shut behind Flynn. "Now look what you've done!"

"What _I've_ done?" he replied contrarily, "Nuh-uh, we were BOTH loud."

"Yeah," she ceased shouting, but the whine remained, "But that's only because _you_ have some kind of a problem with Flynn all the sudden now and-"

"It's all because you _said_ you were coming to bed," Gem crossed his arms in front of him, with a scowl.

"I didn't think you'd go without me... and I just wanted-"

"To leave me out!" he finished, though the look on Gemma's face made it quite clear that wasn't what she was going to say.

"ENOUGH!" K cut in, slamming her clipboard on the copper bin with a loud clang to get their attention. The risk of the past creeping up on the two was starting to look minimal with comparison to the potential that the two would break down all on their own. "I will not have the two of you destroying unit cohesion with your squabbling!"

The two stared back, abashed, falling silent again.

"You _are_ twins, but that means that you are also _two_ people. You don't have to do every last thing together in battle anymore, and it's only natural for that to carry over into your social lives as well. There is no reason _either_ of you can't spend time alone with other friends," she started, causing Gem to scowl, and Gemma to

smirk.

"But I don't think he wants to be just friends," Gem complained.

"Gem," K replied, walking a very fine line, "Trust your sister. She's not going to be _fraternizing_ within an active unit engaged in wartime exercises."

"But Dillon and Summer-" Gemma began to protest.

"Have not yet crossed the line into fraternization," K interrupted, "and I trust you and Flynn will not either." Now Gem smirked, and Gemma scowled. "Are we done here?"

The two nodded, neither looking particularly pleased or disappointed with the outcome. Such was frequently the result with forced compromise.

"Then both of you... out of my Zord bay. Go to the park or go watch TV or something... _together,_ " she picked up her clipboard and began to use it to shoe the two of them toward the stairs to the catwalk. "And tell Flynn he can come check up on the Road Attack Zord if he wishes now..."

The two complied, bounding up the stairs with no further prodding, as K returned to the inventory, sighing softly to herself. With any luck this would dispel the situation between the two for the time being. Flynn was level enough to take the situation with grace... at least she presumed as much. What any of the Rangers got up to once this war was over, if it was ever over, was their business. She certainly anticipated that Summer would likely follow Dillon to the ends of the earth once the team disbanded... if he would allow her to, which she wasn't entirely certain about, and if Gemma and Flynn were to take up with one another again, after the war, well that was no one's business but theirs, not even Gem's.

Eventually they would have to acclimate to life outside the Soup... to a world without battles to fight or robots to blow up; but for now, until Venjix was wiped from the earth, the world needed what Alphabet Soup had raised them to be... all three of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding the "bin of carbon," because I got a lot of perturbed comments on this chapter, yes it is scientificaly possible to have a "bin of carbon." In fact I have a "box of carbon" in my art cabinet. It's filled with chunks of graphite for drawing. Pure to the last molecule? Of course not, but sufficient to be considered a "box of carbon" just as I can have a "bottle of mercury" from broken thermometers or a "cylinder of helium" to fill balloons. Hope that soothes the ruffled feathers of my fellow science geeks.


	10. P is for Pathos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> P is for Pathos: An argument which appeals to logic is scientifically superior to one which appeals to the emotions... but it can be very difficult to ignore strong feelings, even when they are completely illogical.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during "Dome Dolls."

K glanced away from her computer, not for the first, or even the fifth time in the last twenty minutes, down at Ziggy, still laid out where he fell. On the one hand it seemed wrong to just leave him there, when they'd gone and propped the rest of the male rangers up against the wall, but on the other he was already in the lab, and it seemed improprietous to go about touching him without need.

"Contact Protocol," she said, to no one in particular, trying to dispel the intrusive thoughts which kept distracting her from her work. "Let's just concentrate on the antidote, shall we?"

She had to get it working before Venjix managed to swarm the city. Even with Summer up there trying to calm her down, Specialist Vasquez could not be counted on to keep the dome shields operational on her own. It wasn't that she wasn't competent, in fact she made an optimal subordinate, but by her panicky nature, K could predict with rather high certainty that Vasquez would object to being left with sole responsibility for the Bio-dome... strongly enough to melt down completely if this went on too long.

While it was tempting to resent the Specialist's lack of self direction capability, K sympathized with the woman. K had volunteered to the defense of the city... she knew what she was getting into the moment she stepped into it, but, as she had learned while working with the young woman early in the setup phase of the Ranger team, Vasquez had been conscripted into her position, as the military dwindled in the fight against Venjix. She had been a computer support technician nearing the end of two year enlistment in the National Guard, which was paying for her secondary education, when in a last ditch effort to save Corinth, all discharges were suspended, and every last remaining guardsman was mobilized into full time military duty. She'd been stuck on control tower duty ever since.

"We need to get the men awake as soon as possible," she muttered, still speaking to the empty lab. "Vasquez does not want to be in charge."

K redoubled her efforts at antidote fabrication, guiding the manipulation of the solution currently sitting in her nano-fabrication chamber, just a few feet away. Advanced chemistry with out the mess: the device, and its ability to manipulate the composition of a solution on a molecular level, had been the inspiration for Morphing. Why carry a suit around with you at all times when you could have it molecularly assembled around you from a remote location?

"Modifications to Road Attack Zord complete!" Gemma bounded into the lab. "But right now it can only be energized using Scott's Engine Cell."

"Right," K confirmed, "Antidote: version one," she stood from her terminal to collect the liquid from her nano-fabrication chamber. "Computer simulation calculates a fifty two percent probability of success," she loaded the bottle into the aerosolizing mister, and paused, "Now, who should we test it on?"

It only took a moment for her eyes to alight in the same place they kept being drawn... the Green Ranger. She darted across the room and knelt at his side, Gemma on her heel, and sprayed the concentration in his face. He woke almost immediately, much to the doctor's delight... but then he opened his mouth.

"I had the strangest dream... we... we were on a date..." he stammered out, reaching up to touch her hand.

"That sounds like a nightmare," she replied, removing her hand from his reach as he grunted softly and fell back into a deep sleep, much to her disappointment. Failure.

"Any luck?" Summer entered the lab, standing over the three on the ground.

"Luck is an abstract concept that ignores skill... but since you asked," K and Gemma stood from the floor, "no."

The attack sirens sounded, drawing K quickly back to her terminal to check on the cause.

"The guards at the Eastern Quadrants must be asleep," she sighed. "The shields have been breached."

"We need the streets cleared," Summer said hurriedly as she started for the door to the lab. "What we're planning is going to have a large area of effect..." and with that the two were out the door of her lab, leaving her alone again, with the four sleeping Rangers propped against the wall... and Ziggy. She peered down at his sleeping form again, thinking about what he'd said. It didn't actually sound like a nightmare at all... which of course was why it couldn't be allowed to happen.

'He's cute when he's asleep,' she thought, and not for the first time.

Allowing herself to indulge the thought for moment, she recalled the disastrous first deployment of the Croc Carrier. That night she had stayed up, without sleep, trying to find out why it had malfunctioned so spectacularly, and he had stayed up with her... annoying as ever. The following morning though, as she briefed the other Rangers about the need for the flux over-thruster, she watched as he slowly drooped and fell face first, asleep in his bowl of cereal, and couldn't help, for just one moment, thinking about how adorable he was like that.

"Not now!" she chastised herself, for the daydream. "There's an attack bot on the loose!"

Besides which, cuteness was a highly superficial way of selecting a mate. Even Summer wasn't that shallow. After all, it was Scott, and not Dillon who scored a ten on an objective scale of cuteness, at least from where K was standing...

'And Ziggy...' She shook her head at the intrusive thought. It had never been this much of a problem when she'd been behind her screens, even if there had been somewhat of an unrealized ulterior motive to giving him a long laborious task that left him bottom end up for most of the afternoon, scrubbing. At the time, she had dismissed it as nothing more to it than the sublimation of simple human animal desires in a contained population, no different to Gem's brief infatuation with her. It was a passing physiological reaction, nothing more.

"Summer and Gemma need the roads cleared!" she snapped, at herself more than anyone else, "and Vasquez does not want to be in charge."

She called up her cameras in the streets and muttered something quite rude, realizing that the infantry... what remained of the infantry, would have their hands more than full clearing the streets of the unconscious male population, and the panicking female population of the city.

"All remaining active Corinth Military!" she tapped into the military coms, "This is Doctor K. As you may have noted, the male population of the city is currently incapacitated. This includes the majority of your chain of command, and many of your comrades. Specialist Vasquez is currently the highest ranking officer, but as her hands are full maintaining the dome functions, I am taking command. Rouse all off duty female personnel in the barracks. All patrol units: I need you to clear the streets in your sectors of all civilians and incapacitated males. All reserve infantry: assist in the clearing of the Eastern Quadrant, currently under attack by a Venjix bot. All gate guards: check in on alternate coded channel... I need to know which gates have remaining personnel, and which will need reinforcements. That bot came in through an unguarded gate."

K sighed, and settled back into her work on the antidote, counting on the mere 32% of the Corinth Military not currently under the effects of the toxin to follow her commands... fairly certain that Vasquez would be grateful, rather than perturbed at her decision to usurp her command.

She sighed, eyes alighting first on the sleeping Rangers sitting against the wall, and then once more on Ziggy, reminders of the untenable position the city was in, with half of it's population completely incapacitated. What if she couldn't come up with the antidote in time? What if they were stuck like this until they inevitably starved to death or were destroyed by attack bots?

"Ok... we're not thinking about that right now," she said, sullenly, as she pulled up the coded channel data-flow, pinpointing the unguarded gates, and opened the military coms again, selecting a private channel, "Lieutenant Fernandes."

"A bit busy down here Doctor K..." the young woman replied.

"I need you to send two of your unit to gate 15. It's unguarded."

"Why my unit?"

"I'm sending personnel from other units to other gates Lieutenant, your unit is the closest to gate 15 which can spare personnel."

"I can't spare any. I've only got six!"

"That's four more than the next nearest unit."

There was silence on the other end of the coms for a moment. "Right... on it."

K called up five more units in this manner, re-allocating infantry to guard the gates which had fewer than two women on duty at the time of the attack, all the while working on the Antidote. Multitasking command and development was an important skill she had been required to develop early in her days in Corinth, and it hadn't been easy, previously focusing on only one project at any given time, on time-lines as determined by Sir and Ma'am. Managing her own time was never a concern in the Soup.

She often wished she really were as cold as people thought she was, that she really was the human computer, the robot or sociopath that others took her for. It would be so much easier in that case to ignore these intrusive feelings she kept having and focus on the tasks she was trying to juggle. Instead the best she could do was stuff those feelings down as hard and tight as she could, cover them with a thick layer of logic, and hope they would go away in time.

On the other hand, K just as often envied Ziggy, and his purely emotional way of looking at the world. She really did suppose it must be wonderful to grow up at a lower intelligence level. While she could see only clear facts and figures, usually predicting a dismal outcome for the human race, Ziggy, without the capacity to understand the depths they were trying to claw their way out of, always remained optimistic. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt so much to feel, if she could hope...

"Antidote probability... 70 percent," she lamented, "Not good enough."

She didn't even bother testing it that time. In all likelihood Ziggy would just say something else infuriating or else completely stupid that would lodge itself in her head as further distraction. That was the trouble with him. His distraction capabilities had moved beyond inducing inconvenient but otherwise negligible hormonal reactions. His words... his inane statements had a way of staying with her long after they were spoken, rattling about and popping back into her head at the most inopportune times.

"I had the strangest dream... we... we were on a date..."

She could always humor him...

"No," she announced, frustratedly to the empty room. "There's a reason we cannot have nice things."

She returned her focus to re-calibrating the nano-fabrication chamber for a new chemical formula, determined not to allow herself so much as another fleeting moment of fantasy.

It was bad enough that she'd almost allowed herself to enjoy his company only a few hours earlier, acquiescing to his insistence that he could teach her how to prepare food fresh, rather than re-heating the frozen entrees she habitually consumed. She had no real desire to eat anything else, but had consented to the lessons, she realized shortly after they began, as a means of spending time with him. Realizing this, she'd cut the interaction short and retreated, leaving the poor boy in frustration again. He probably wouldn't take much more of her abuse before he became resentful... which was after all the goal of her behavior. It would be better for him to hate her, even if it hurt her... or perhaps because it hurt her.

As frustrating as he could be, and despite his criminal past, Ziggy had always struck her as a gentle person. Somehow she knew, if she were to allow him in, take him up on the affections he offered so relentlessly, he wouldn't ever hurt her. He didn't have it in him. He was too nice, too gentle, too good for her to ever allow herself to have him, no matter how much she wanted to.

Her eyes alighted on his prone figure again, mind reaching back to the feeling she had for just a moment, when thrown across the lab by a Venjix controlled Dillon, she had met upon impact, not the painted concrete floor of the lab, but Ziggy's gentle arms. She'd laid awake many nights trying to recall that moment in all completeness, to remember what it felt like to have his arms around her, soft... warm... comfortable...

An alarm sounded again... the control tower was taking damage. K checked the extent and source of the damage, something emanating from where Gemma and Summer were engaging the Venjix attack bot... climate control and coms were out... Vasquez was cut off from all assistance.

"Vasquez does not want to be in charge," it was becoming a mantra, meaning stop thinking your own selfish thoughts, and save the city already.

She re-tweaked the formula, for the umpteenth time, and set the nano-fabrication chamber to produce it, simultaneously feeding the formula it into her biochemical computer simulation. Without even waiting for the results she started working on the next iteration in case this one failed. They were running out of time... if this thing enlarged... and they couldn't field a Megazord without at least one of the male rangers, awake...

The computer chirped... and she turned to the other screen, reading out the results.

"I have the Antidote!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Up: V is for Venjix - There's far more in common between the doctor and her creation than she would like to admit... but far less than he believes there is... (Ancient History)


End file.
